^S^^^SyM:i:^;C;^(f  ;•?<■?  v-;^:^-/ 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


a>  -> 


rs 


isw^ 


)C 


h  ^ 


\ 


► 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/englisliliteraturOOmagniala 


ENGLISH     LITERATURE 

IN    THE 

NINETEENTH     CENTURY 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

IN  THE 

NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

AN   ESSAY   IN    CRITICISM 


LAURIE    MAGNUS,    M.A. 

AUTHOR   OF 
'  INTRODUCTION   TO    POETRY  '    ETC. 


New  York  :    G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

London  :    ANDREW  MELROSE 

1909 


CollegiB 
Library 


H  lie- 


DEDICATED 

BY      PERMISSION 

TO 

GEOEGE    MEREDITH 


^221828 


PREFACE 


SO  much  has  been  written  about  the  literature  of 
the  nineteenth  century  since  that  literature  was 
written  that  a  few  words  of  apology  may  seem  due  for 
a  fresh  book  on  the  same  theme.  I  have  attempted 
in  this  volume  not  so  much  a  history  of  English 
literature  between  1784  and  the  present  day  as  a 
survey  of  that  literature  as  a  whole,  and  an  essay  in 
its  criticism.  Where  such  ample  help  is  provided  in 
the  shape  of  handbooks  and  epitomes,  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  add  that  I  have  neither  consciously  adopted 
any  opinion  at  second-hand  nor  criticized  any  book 
which  I  have  not  read.  At  the  same  time,  I  am  much 
indebted  to  some  of  the  volumes  in  the  '  English  Men 
of  Letters '  series,  most,  if  not  all,  of  which  have  the 
advantage  of  being  written  by  (as  well  as  about) 
English  men  of  letters ;  and,  among  other  authorities, 
I  think  that  no  student  of  English  literature  can 
fail  to  realize  his  obligation  to  the  works  of  scholar- 
ship by  Professor  George  Saintsbury.  His  histories  of 
criticism  and  prosody,  his  (edited)  Periods  of  European 
Literature  and  some  of  his  other  works  are  not  merely 
mines  of  learning;  they  are  valuable,  too,  for  their 
commonsense,  and  for  the  corrective  they  supply  to 
aerial  experiments  in  poetics. 


viii  PREFACE 

In  discussing  living  writers  I  have  drawn  an  im- 
aginary, but  fairly  obvious,  line  between  the  nineteenth 
and  the  twentieth  centuries.  Writers  belonging  to 
the  twentieth  century  I  have  not  discussed  in  their 
persons,  but  rather,  as  far  as  requisite,  according  to 
the  tendencies  they  represent,  and  otherwise  hardly 
at  all.  Writers  belonging  to  the  last  century  I  have 
tried  to  consider  impartially,  whether  living  or  dead. 
So  many  died  prematurely  that  the  survivors  can- 
not logically  be  omitted.  The  passages  referring  to 
Swinburne  were  in  type  before  his  sudden  illness  and 
death  this  month,  and  only  a  few  words  have  been 
altered  while  the  book  was  in  the  press. 

The  proof-sheets  have  been  read  by  my  friend, 
Miss  Elizabeth  Lee,  whom  I  am  glad  to  thank  for  her 
care  and  trouble.  A  debt  of  encouragement,  indirect 
and  direct,  I  am  permitted  to  acknowledge  in  the 
dedication. 

L.  M. 

London,  Ajpril  1909. 


CONTENTS 


Preface         .... 
Proem  .... 

Book  I.  1784-1832— 

§  1.  Heirs  and  Assigns 

§  2.  George  Crabbe    . 

§  3.  With  Many  Voices 

§  4.  Prose  Fiction 

§  5.  Imaginative  Poetry,  I.  . 

§  6.  Essayists  and  Critics     . 

§  7.  Sir  Walter  Scott 

§  8.  Imaginative  Poetry,'  II. 
Book    II.  The  Transit  through  1832 
Book  III.  The  Victorian  Age— 

§  1.  Knowledge  and  Belief 

§  2.  Tennyson  . 

§  3.  The  Novel 

§  4.  Imaginative  Reason 

§  5.  Pre-Raphaelitism 

§  6.  The  Sanction  op  Beauty 

§  7.  The  Sanction  of  Morality 

§  8.  Symbols  of  Beauty 

§  9.  The  Higher  Journalism 
Index  .... 


PAGE 

vii 


13 

20 

28 

44 

56 

83 

103 

117 

151 

198 
224 
243 
280 
301 
315 
338 
367 
391 
411 


NINETEENTH     CENTURY 
LITERATURE 


PROEM 

LOOKING  back  in  this  centenary  year  of  Tennyson, 
Darwin,  Gladstone,  Fitzgerald,  at  the  monuments 
of  progress  which  they  raised,  it  is  just  and  timely  to 
ask,  not  merely  for  facts,  but  for  conclusions.  A  new 
formula  is  wanted  by  which  to  connote  the  hterature 
of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England.  Is  it  an  '  age ' 
or  a  nonage  in  the  jealous  records  of  art  ?  Can  a  name 
and  a  symbol  be  attached  to  it,  by  which  to  distinguish 
it  for  ever,  and  wherever  literature  is  held  dear  ? 

Broadly  stated,  and  assuming  a  background  to  set 
off  the  properties  of  criticism,  a  sensitive  consciousness 
responds  to  a  touch  upon  certain  keys.  We  have 
learned  to  recognize  the  notes  of  the  Renaissance,  the 
Age  of  Discovery,  Puritanism,  the  Age  of  Reason,  and 
the  Romantic  Revolt.  These  names  pierce  to  willing 
I 


2  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

minds.  Each  means  something  beyond  the  name. 
Each  suggests  an  atmosphere  and  a  point  of  view, 
and  a  canon  by  which  to  pronounce  judgment.  From 
the  fourteenth  to  the  eighteenth  century,  our  mood 
changes  with  the  scene.  We  fare  with  the  company 
of  pilgrims  on  the  April  morning  which  was  Chaucer. 
We  thread  with  Sidney  and  Spenser  the  last  enchant- 
ments of  the  Middle  Ages.  We  thrill  with  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon  to  the  glory  of  a  receding  horizon,  and  of 
virgin  territories  unexplored.  We  stiffen  our  conscience 
with  Milton,  and  stifle  our  consciousness  with  Pope, 
who  found,  successively,  in  the  Puritan  and  in  the 
Neo-Augustan  ideals,  compensation  for  the  lost  gardens 
in  which  so  much  had  run  to  seed  ;  and,  finally,  we 
acclaim,  as  a  '  romantic  revival '  or  a  '  renascence  of 
wonder ',  the  reaction  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  from  the  exclusive  standards  of  that  epoch. 
There,  commonly,  pliability  stops.  The  swift  shifting 
of  the  moods,  responsive  through  five  hundred  years  of 
history  to  the  impressions  which  that  history  conveys, 
begins  to  slacken  at  the  last.  The  record,  as  Sir  John 
Seeley  said  of  English  history  as  a  whole,  '  leaves  off 
in  such  a  gradual  manner,  growing  feebler  and  feebler, 
duller  and  duller  towards  the  close,  that  one  might 
suppose  that  England,  instead  of  steadily  gaining  in 
strength,  had  been  for  a  century  or  two  dying  of  mere 
old  age  '. 

The  injustice  is  greatest  to  literature,  where  most 
progress  has  been  made  ;  and  it  is  to  correct  the  con- 
clusion from  this  feebleness  and  dulness,  and  to  measure 


PROEM  3 

the  steady  gain  in  strength,  that  the  following  chapters 
are  composed.  It  is  not  merely  as  a  revival  or  revolt 
in  the  direction  of  romance,  it  is  not  even  as  a  '  re- 
nascence of  wonder ',  in  Mr.  Watts-Dunton's  phrase, 
that  a  complete  formula  is  found  for  the  literature  of 
the  nineteenth  century  in  England.  The  '  Romantic 
Revival '  proper  was  a  clear  and  a  well-defined  means, 
deliberately  adopted  by  some  writers,  towards  a  more 
remote  goal.  It  was  chiefly  the  Scottish  contribution 
to  the  main  movement  of  the  times,  and  was  due  to  the 
native  wealth  of  romantic  material  in  the  North.  To 
this  we  shall  come  in  its  own  place.  But  if  the  descrip- 
tion was  not  wholly  adequate  even  to  the  pioneers 
of  revolt,  it  falls  ludicrously  short  of  comprehending, 
say,  Wordsworth  or  Shelley.  Moreover,  while  the 
term  invalidates  much  of  the  most  sincere  work  of  the 
writers  included  in  the  formula,  its  novelty  is  obviously 
exhausted  before  the  nineteenth  century  is  well  begun. 
To  force  Carlyle,  Ruskin  and  Charles  Dickens,  Tennyson, 
Darwin  and  Matthew  Arnold  into  the  Procrustes-bed 
of  a  '  renascence  of  wonder '  is  to  weaken  their  force, 
and  to  postpone  indefinitely  the  recognition  of  their 
meaning.  Part  of  the  contempt  for  literature  as  an 
unpractical  study,  and  part  of  the  present  reluctance 
to  regard  it,  equally  with  religion  and  philosophy,  as 
a  medium  of  truth,  are  to  be  traced  to  this  ineffective 
statement  of  its  contribution  to  modern  thought. 

The  issue  might  be  evaded  by  selecting  arbitrary 
dates  between  which  to  place  the  contents  of  the  litera- 
ture of  the  nineteenth  century.     Thus,  it  would  be 


4  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

comparatively  simple,  by  taking  1801  as  the  starting- 
point  and  1900  as  the  close,  to  sort  into  congruous 
groups  all  books  published  within  that  period.  Again, 
a  less  crude  device  would  be  to  select  two  dates  of 
obvious  public  importance  at  a  distance  of  about  a 
hundred  years.  The  French  Revolution  and  the  death 
of  Queen  Victoria  would  serve.  Or,  thirdly,  and  more 
subtly  still,  the  century  of  literature  might  be  defined 
in  literary  terms,  with  Wordsworth's  birth  as  the 
terminus  a  quo  and  Tennyson's  death  as  the  terminus 
ad  quern.  This  view,  plausible  in  itself,  ranges  senti- 
ment on  its  side.  It  is  pleasant  and  graceful  to  write 
of  the  dawn  of  a  literary  cycle  in  the  Cumberland  hills 
and  of  its  fading  on  the  moonlight  at  Haslemere.  But 
none  of  these  methods  is  historical,  the  last,  perhaps, 
least  of  all.  Sentiment  prepares  fresh  effects,  and 
February  12th,  1908,  with  its  sunshine  on  eighty  winters 
at  Boxhill,  is  as  notable  a  date  in  nineteenth- century 
literature  as  October  5th,  1892. 

It  is  not  for  the  sake  of  fixing  dates,  but  in  order  to 
focus  observation,  that  a  survey  in  advance  is  required. 
We  are  seeking  a  common  formula,  a  distinct  and 
recognizable  mark,  to  which  the  literary  products  of 
the  nineteenth  century  may  be  referred.  For  this 
purpose  the  period  corresponds  to  no  definite  tale  of 
years,  whether  in  the  Gregorian  calendar  or  in  the 
calendar  of  great  men.  The  art  of  an  age  begins  in  a 
tentative  way,  with  little  tributary  runlets,  springing 
in  all  kinds  of  places  and  percolating  all  kinds  of  soil. 
Presently,  these  gather  strength ;  they  break  down  the 


PROEM  5 

intervening  barriers,  and  unite  in  a  common  stream. 
A  single  tendency  is  observed.  Works  conforming  to 
that  tendency  belong  to  the  main  current  of  thought ; 
works  failing  to  conform  to  it  are  related  thereto  in 
various  degrees  of  reaction,  modification,  and  excess. 
There  is  individual  variation,  and  there  is  a  process 
of  growth.  A  nation's  literature  is  an  organism, 
subject,  like  all  the  rest,  to  laws  of  heredity  and  evolu- 
tion. Each  age  is  a  phase  of  development.  Natural 
instincts  compel  it  to  throw  off  as  violently  as  it  can 
the  slough  of  the  preceding  age.  The  youthful  revolt 
of  Keats  against  '  the  name  of  one  Boileau ',  to  which 
we  shall  recur  later  on,  is  a  manifestation  of  this  instinct ; 
it  is  a  birth-mark  which  disappears.  The  progress  of 
literature  is  not  measured  by  weighing  this  name  against 
that,  by  opposing  the  standard  of  Milton  to  the  standard 
of  Pope,  and  pronouncing  definitely  for  either.  By 
this  method  criticism  is  degraded  to  '  I  like,  thou 
likest,  he  likes  '.  The  true  measure  of  value  for  the 
literature  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  not  the  revolt  of 
Keats,  but  the  degeneracy  of  Donne.  Out  of  the 
*  fantastic '  decline  the  Augustan  proprieties  were 
constructed,  in  obedience  to  obscure  laws  of  growth, 
adding  purpose  and  order  to  the  material  and  power 
which  were  to  pass  to  the  nineteenth  century.  But 
the  heirs  by  natural  selection  are  not  mere  rebels 
against  their  fathers.  The  butterfly  frees  itself  from 
the  chrysalis  ;  it  does  not  spend  its  short  career  in  the 
throes  of  that  antagonism.  Agony  succeeds  antagony, 
as  the  noonday  the  twilight. 


6  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

When  we  pass  from  the  birth  of  a  new  age  to  con- 
sider its  maturity,  its  agonia, — what  it  did,  and  how  it 
did  it,  the  sum  of  its  desire,  its  achievement,  and  its 
bequest — ,  we  see  more  clearly  the  operation  of  these 
obscure  laws  of  growth.  Summit  by  summit,  the 
peaks  of  literature  emerge,  each  with  distinctive 
features  and  a  character  of  its  own.  The  cloud-capped 
peak  of  the  Renaissance,  the  purple  Puritan  height,  the 
glittering  summit  of  Augustanism,  are  revealed  in  the 
splendid  symmetry  of  their  increasing  strength,  till 
the  expectant  spectator  turns  to  the  historian  of  the 
new  age  and  demands  the  record  of  its  trust,  the  revela- 
tion of  its  accumulated  power.  It  is  not  enough  to 
drag  our  footsteps  through  the  flat  lands  between 
steep  and  steep,  to  observe  Keats  impatient  at  Boileau, 
and  De  Quincey  railing  at  Pope  ;  a  positive  formula 
is  wanted,  and  a  definite  conclusion  from  experience : 
in  the  process  of  the  ages,  fresh  light  has  collided  with 
the  darkness — what  new  colour  is  revealed  ? 

Reviewed  under  this  aspect  not  of  time  but  of  eternity, 
a  nation's  literature  is  seen  to  be  a  part  of  the  coherent 
movement  of  mankind  towards  self-realization  and 
self-expression.  The  permanence  of  the  arts — as  modes 
independent  of  their  own  forms — is  a  strong  argument 
for  optimism,  and  goes  far  towards  proving  man's 
intuitive  belief  in  ultimate  design.  The  most  readily 
conceivable  idea  of  Good  is  a  state  of  complete  and 
harmonious  satisfaction  of  every  need  of  expression, 
and  the  efforts  of  mankind  tend  steadily  in  that  direction. 
The  hand  and  the  eye  find  their  aim  before  the  search- 


PROEM  7 

ings  of  the  heart.  The  wings  of  the  spirit  beat  in  vain, 
though  our  air-ships  grapple  in  the  void.  But  as  the 
secrets  of  matter  are  revealed,  and  material  darkness 
rolls  away  before  the  increasing  sun  of  knowledge, 
some  glimpses  are  revealed.  Spiritual  wisdom,  we 
hope — and  Hope  survives  her  broken  strings — ,  is 
served  by  the  increment  to  knowledge.  Meanwhile, 
the  most  readily  conceivable  idea  of  Evil  is  a  state  of 
opposition  to  that  tendency,  and  the  value  of  the  oppo- 
sition lies  in  the  friction  between  the  two,  stimulating 
the  tendency  to  Good.  These  ideas  of  finite  intelli- 
gence are,  doubtless,  not  absolutely  right.  They  are 
of  use  as  a  working  hypothesis,  however,  to  explain 
what  were  otherwise  obscure, — the  relation  of  the  spirit 
to  the  flesh,  and  the  place  of  religion  and  the  arts  in  a 
material  universe.  As  a  child  expresses  his  needs  at 
first  in  sounds  of  broken  speech,  and,  later,  through  a 
medium  of  interpretation  common  to  a  certain  district 
— the  English  language  throughout  the  British  Empire, 
the  Italian  in  Italy,  and  so  forth — ,  thus  employing  the 
best  available  means,  halting  and  imperfect  though  it 
be,  of  self-expression  and  communication,  so  mankind, 
communing  with  nature  and  with  whatsoever  Power 
ordained  nature's  design,  devises  modes  of  interpreta- 
tion, still  halting  and  imperfect,  but  common  to  a  wider 
area  than  a  single  country  or  empire.  Under  each 
system  of  religion  its  adherents  are  united  by  a  bond 
of  expression,  not  of  ordinary  needs  which  everyday 
language  satisfies,  but  of  spiritual  cravings  satisfied 
by  a  higher  revelation.     And  the  religious  idea,  tran- 


8  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

scending  systems  of  religion,  unites  mankind  by  a  bond 
the  strength  of  which  is  disguised  by  differences  of 
fashion  in  the  wearing  of  it.  Art,  again,  is  a  language 
interpreting  nature  to  man,  and  the  difierences  of  cult 
count  for  less  than  the  imperious  need  to  which  the 
perpetuation  of  the  mode  bears  witness.  As  a  child 
laughs  or  cries  when  he  is  pleased  or  hurt,  so  man 
expresses  in  art-forms  his  sense  of  wonder  and  of  beauty 
which  ordinary  speech  is  inadequate  to  convey. 

One  further  reflection  may  be  suggested.  The 
service  of  art  to  man  is  in  the  most  practical  kind. 
There  are  those  who  ignore  this  fact  of  supreme  import- 
ance to  appreciation,  and,  misled  by  their  steep  im- 
mersion in  merely  material  pursuits,  deem  religion  a 
pastime  for  women,  and  literature,  like  Latin  verse, 
a  kind  of  '  extra  '  for  schools — a  '  frill '  of  education, 
in  the  expressive  American  phrase.  The  two  things 
commonly  go  together,  for  the  so-caUed  emotional 
appeal  of  the  religious  and  imaginative  moods  dis- 
guises, and  even  destroys,  their  severely  practical 
purpose.  This  '  man  of  the  world '  type  of  opinion 
is  a  man's  of  a  very  little  world,  and  his  argument 
deserves  to  be  exposed  in  all  its  hideous  small-minded- 
ness. Women,  because  of  their  part  in  the  little  world 
of  these  worldlings,  are  degraded  forthwith  to  a  lower 
intellectual  plane,  and  then  religion,  almost  the  sole 
mystery  which  still  defies  knowledge,  is  committed 
to  their  charge.  Ignorance  has  rarely  been  betrayed 
by  so  complete  a  double  fallacy.  And  hardly,  if  at  all, 
less  servile  is  the  attitude  of  those  who  affect  to  despise 


PROEM  9 

literature  and  the  arts.  The  poet  —  '^roirjTTjg,  the 
maker, — confers  an  incalculable  boon  on  the  rest  of 
mankind  precisely  by  his  abstraction  from  ordinary 
pursuits.  His  ardent,  invincible  resolve  to  thrust 
back  the  substance-seeming  shadows,  and  to  clutch  at 
the  realities  beyond,  his  so-called  '  unpractical '  search 
for  a  language  adequate  to  thought  and  for  a  method 
suited  to  his  aim,  his  re-interpretation  of  the  universe 
in  terms  of  a  quickened  understanding,  are  faculties 
more  and  more  precious  as  the  weight  of  custom  grows 
heavier,  and  as  civilized  life  is  crushed  by  the  resources 
of  its  own  invention.  A  misprisal  of  the  gifts  of  art, 
and  a  postponement  of  the  claims  of  the  imagination 
to  the  satisfaction  of  material  desires,  are  signs  of  an 
ignorance  of  values  urgently  crying  for  correction. 
For  such  work  is  immediately  directed  to  the  practical 
benefit  of  mankind. 

The  same  tendency  towards  Good  which  edifies  our 
conduct  and  purifies  our  laws  refines  at  the  same  time 
our  art.  All  progress  is  a  single  process  ;  no  part  of 
it  comes  undivided,  and  no  part  of  it  comes  in  full 
measure.  But  the  cultivation  of  art  is,  of  all  other 
modes,  the  least  subject  to  abuse  and  mischance,  and 
the  most  tenacious  of  the  ideal.  Fewer  obstacles  oppose 
its  fulfilment,  for  it  belongs  more  securely  to  the  sphere 
where  hunger,  and  pain,  and  greed,  and  a  thousand 
temporal  distractions  do  not  tempt  its  votaries  to 
compromise.  Accordingly,  the  artistic  revelation  of 
design  draws  nearer  to  the  goal  than  the  revelation  by 
government  or  conduct.     Our  art  is  purer  than  our 


10  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

laws,  our  laws  are  purer  than  our  action.  The  farther 
the  milieu  of  circumstance  in  which  our  principles  are 
displayed  is  removed  from  actuality,  the  clearer  and 
more  enduring  is  the  vision.  Our  laws  would  not  fall 
short  of  just  government,  nor  our  acts  of  right  conduct, 
if  the  vehicles  of  artistic  truth  were  as  familiar  as  our 
daily  speech.  Herein  is  the  reward  of  art-study.  It 
raises  enjoyment  to  a  higher  power.  It  bestows  on 
men  the  new  faculty  of  communion  beyond  the  region 
of  facts. 

Pure  literature  is  one  of  the  art-forms,  and  it  is 
under  this  aspect  that  the  contribution  of  English 
letters  in  the  nineteenth  century  may  most  fitly  be  con- 
sidered. No  lower  standard  will  satisfy  the  demands 
its  practitioners  make.  And  when  we  have  taken  this 
resolve  to  discuss  literature  as  a  mode  of  truth,  the 
problem  of  a  formula  is  simplified.  Whatever  addi- 
tion the  nineteenth  century  has  made  to  the  growing 
evidence  of  God  to  man,  whatever  advance  has  been 
recorded  along  the  permanent  way  of  human  progress — 
physical  science  and  its  application — ,  we  shall  find  its 
spiritual  value,  its  increment  to  truth,  weighed  in  the 
crucible  of  such  art-forms  as  the  age  shall  deem  most 
appropriate.  The  literary  form  has  proved  best  suited 
to  English  inspiration^,  and  to  the  literature  of  the 
nineteenth    century,    accordingly,    we    look    for    the 

^  Two  predisposing  conditions  raay  be  mentioned,  (i)  the  Anglican 
Church  does  not  encourage  the  art  of  painting,  which  was  almost 
wholly  ecclesiastical  in  mediaeval  Italy,  and  (ii)  the  climate  deters 
us  from  studying  nature  in  the  open.  How  large  a  part  is  played 
in  English  life  by  the  Church  and  the  weather  is  obvious. 


PROEM  II 

spiritual   evaluation    of   the   works   and   business   of 
that  age. 

Thus,  the  formula  of  literature  is  identical  with  the 
tendency  of  the  age,  and  the  soul  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  revealed  through  the  vision  of  its  writers. 
Two  moments  especially  stand  out  pre-eminently  in 
retrospect.  The  first  is  the  French  Revolution,  and 
the  second  is  the  Darwinian  hypothesis.  They  are 
connected  by  threads  so  fine  as  almost  to  escape  detec- 
tion save  when  sublimated  by  art.  The  seers  and 
interpreters  render  them  in  their  unity,  not  in  their 
differences,  and,  reviewed  in  that  light,  they  are  parts 
of  a  single  whole,  which,  in  default  of  a  better  name, 
may  be  called,  in  one  word,  emancipation.  '  This 
wonderful  century',  exclaimed  one  of  its  great  men, 
William  Ewart  Gladstone,  whose  life  (1809-98)  ex- 
tended nearly  through  its  '  course,  '  its  motto  is. 
Unhand  me  ! ',  and  it  is  as  the  Age  of  Emancipation 
that  it  takes  its  place  in  the  series  of  which  the  Age 
of  Reason  was  the  last.  The  doctrine  of  political 
equality  acted  on  the  social  system  by  a  revolution 
in  France,  and  by  a  chain  of  enactments  less  violent 
in  their  happening,  but  not  less  subversive  in  their 
results,  during  the  Victorian  era  and  the  years  immedi- 
ately preceding  it.  The  doctrine  of  biological  evolu- 
tion, as  applied  directly  to  the  conclusions  of  human 
knowledge,  and  acting  indirectly  on  pre-established 
systems  of  religious  and  moral  prohibitions,  was  yet 
more  revolutionary  in  its  effect,  inasmuch  as  no  Parlia- 
ments or  Kings  were  interposed  between  the  force 


12  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  its  object.  It  drove  straight  at  its  goal,  opposing 
the  light  of  its  truth  to  the  clinging  and  reluctant 
shadows  of  authority,  sentiment,  and  tradition ;  and 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  combined  action  of 
both  forces  has  changed  the  foundations  of  EngUsh 
life,  and  leaves  us,  at  the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century, 
grasping  at  new  clues  to  truth,  at  new  dogmas  of  belief, 
in  conduct  and  in  politics.  It  is  in  the  reconstruction 
of  the  foundations  of  reason,  and  faith,  and  hope, 
without  which  no  philosophy  has  equipoise,  and  no  life 
is  worth  living,  shattered  as  they  were  by  the  impact 
of  emancipation  in  its  various  shapes,  that  we  find 
the  function  of  art  in  the  history  of  the  literature  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Art,  whether  literary  or 
other,  selects  its  material  from  experience,  and  re- 
combines  it  for  eternity.  If  experiment  aim  sincerely 
at  emancipation,  literature,  mirroring  the  aim,  will 
vindicate  true  liberty. 


BOOK    I 

FROM  THE  DEATH  OF  JOHNSON  TO  THE 
DEATH  OF  SCOTT,  1784-1832 

§  1.  HEIRS  AND  ASSIGNS. 

WE  may  start  with  the  disapproved  method  of  a 
catalogue  of  names,  for  out  of  its  compilation 
may  arise  a  feeling  for  differences  and  departures.  Dr. 
Johnson  died  in  1784,  at  the  age  of  seventy-five.  He  Some 
was  the  last  of  the  triumvirate  —  Dryden,  Pope,  and  dates. 
Johnson — who,  through  three  generations,  covering 
the  eighteenth  century,  had  set  the  standard  of  taste. 
Dryden  died  in  1700,  on  the  frontier  of  the  age ;  Pope 
in  1744 ;  and  Dr.  Johnson,  surviving  him  forty  years, 
lived  till  within  five  years  of  the  storming  of  the 
Bastille  by  the  insurgent  mob  in  Paris.  With  this 
insurrection  of  the  mob,  and  with  all  that  was  impHed 
in  society  and  politics  by  the  industrial  unrest 
throughout  Europe,  the  standard  set  by  the  trium- 
virate— its  precise  and  formal  urbanity — was  to  prove 
no  longer  acceptable.  With  Dr.  Johnson  there  seemed 
to   pass  away  the  reasonable   spirit   of   the  English 

13 


14    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 


eighteenth  century.  His  contemporaries  had  mostly 
predeceased  him  ;  there  were  alive  in  the  year  of  his 
death — 


Name. 

Bom. 

Flourished. 

Died. 

Horace  Walpole     . 

1717 

1765 

1797 

Edmund  Burke 

1729 

1775 

1797 

Adam  Smith 

1723 

1775 

1790 

Thomas  Warton    . 

1728 

1775 

1790 

Jeremy  Bentham  . 

1748 

1780 

1832 

William  Cowper     . 

1731 

1780 

1800 

Edward  Gibbon     . 

1737 

1780 

1794 

R.  B.  Sheridan 

1751 

1780 

1816 

WiUiam  Blake 

1757 

1790 

1827 

Robert  Bums 

1759 

1790 

1796 

William  Paley 

1743 

1790 

1805 

Wilham  Godwin    . 

1756 

1795 

1836 

William  Wordsworth     . 

1770 

1805 

1850 

Jane  Austen  . 

1775 

1810 

1817 

Thomas  Campbell . 

1777 

1810 

1844 

George  Crabbe 

1754 

1810 

1832 

S.  T.  Coleridge 

1772 

1815 

1834 

Maria  Edgeworth  . 

1767 

1815 

1849 

Sir  Walter  Scott    . 

1771 

1815 

1832 

Robert  Southey     . 

1774 

1815 

1843 

Wilham  Cobbett    . 

1762 

1820 

1835 

Henry  Hallam 

1777 

1820 

1859 

WiUiam  Ha/.litt     . 

1778 

1820 

1830 

Leigh  Himt   . 

1784 

1820 

1859 

Charles  Lamb 

1775 

1820 

1834 

Walter  Savage  Landor  . 

1775 

1820 

1864 

Thomas  Moore 

1779 

1820 

1852 

Thomas  de  Quincey 

1785 

1820 

1859 

Samuel  Rogers 

1763 

1820 

1855 

Ebenezer  EUiott    . 

1781 

1825 

1849 

Francis  JeflErey 

1773 

1830 

1860 

Thus,  rearranging  these  names  with  a  view  to  dis- 
covering some  guidance  :  when  Johnson,  '  the  last  of 
the  Tories ',  blufE,  burly,  and  domineering,  was  removed 


HEIRS  AND  ASSIGNS  15 

from  the  scene  which  he  adorned,  he  was  survived  by 
Boswell,  his  biographer  {d.  1795),  and  by  Reynolds, 
his  painter  {d.  1792),  and  of  the  rest  chiefly  by  Walpole, 
man  of  letters  and  of  leisure,  by  Cowper,  the  stricken 
poet,  by  Adam  Smith,  author  of  The  Wealth  of  Nations, 
by  Burke,  Crabbe,  Warton,  and  Gibbon.  Of  the  men 
and  women  whom  he  had  known,  and  some  of  whom 
he  had  fascinated  by  his  conversation.  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagu  had  died  in  1762,  Thomas  Gray  in 
1771,  Goldsmith  in  1774,  David  Hume  in  1776,  David 
Garrick  in  1779,  Smollett,  Richardson,  and  Fielding  in 
1771,  1761,  and  1754  respectively,  thus  taking  us  back 
to  the  older  generation  of  Pope,  which  belonged  to 
Johnson's  childhood  and  early  manhood.  Blake  and 
Burns,  whose  active  years  fell  shortly  after  1784, 
blaze  in  the  forehead  of  the  new  age,  and  many  of  its 
major  prophets  were  born  between  1770  and  1780, 
and  were  therefore  in  the  schoolroom  when  Johnson 
died.  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Scott,  Campbell, 
Southey,  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  and  Moore,  Jane  Austen,  the 
novelist,  Jeffrey,  the  critic,  Hallam,  the  historian,  are 
among  the  offspring  of  that  decade.  The  trinity  of 
marvellous  youth,  Keats  (1795-1821),  Shelley  (1792- 
1822),  and  Byron  (1788-1824),  which  burned  itself 
out  so  quickly,  was  still  to  be  born  when  Johnson  died, 
though  it  left  an  undying  inheritance  to  the  solid 
phalanx  of  great  writers,  whose  lives  extend  to  our 
own  day,  and  a  few  of  whose  names  may  briefly  be 
set  down  to  complete  the  forecast  of  the  century. 

The  following  list  is  not  complete,  but  it  suffices  to 


i6    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

show  the  continuity  of  English  literature  since  Johnson 
died  in  1784,  and  to  indicate  the  change  in  its  spirit 
since  that  great  dictator  of  taste  pronounced  judgment 
on  Gray,  the  author  of  the  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard :  '  He  was  dull  in  a  new  way,  and  that  made 
people  think  him  great '. 


Name. 

Bom. 

Died. 

Thomas  Carlyle 

1795 

1881 

Thomas  Hood  . 

1799 

1845 

Lord  Macaulay. 

1800 

1859 

John  Henry  Newma 

n 

1801 

•  1890 

T.  L.  Beddoes  . 

1803 

1849 

George  Borrow . 

1803. 

1881 

Lord  Lytton     . 

1803 

1873 

Lord  Beaconsfield 

1804 

1881 

Harrison  Ainsworth 

1805 

1882 

John  Stuart  Mill 

1806 

1873 

Charles  Darwin 

1809 

1882 

Alfred  Tennyson 

1809 

1892 

Edward  Fitzgerald 

1809 

1883 

Mrs.  Gaskell 

1810 

1865 

W.  M.  Thackeray 

1811 

1863 

Robert  Browning 

1812 

1889 

Charles  Dickens 

1812 

1870 

Charles  Reade  . 

1814 

1884 

Charlotte  Bronte 

1816 

1855 

A.H.Qough    . 

1819 

1861 

♦  George  Eliot ' . 

1819 

1880 

Charles  Kingsley 

1819 

1875 

John  Ruskin     . 

1819 

1900 

Herbert  Spencer 

1820 

1903 

Matthew  Arnold 

1822 

1888 

T.H.Huxley   . 

1825 

1895 

George  Meredith 

1828 

1909 

D.  G.  Rossetti  . 

1828 

1882 

Leslie  Stephen . 

1832 

1904 

William  Morris 

1834 

1896 

Sir  W.  Besant . 

1836 

1901 

A.  C.  Swinburne 

1837 

1909 

HEIRS  AND  ASSIGNS  17 

Time  has  mollified  this  judgment.     The  new  way  of  The  *dai- 

.        ,      ness '  of 

dulness  was  to  prove  a  new  way  to  greatness  m  the  Gray, 
end;  and  here,  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  time,  it  is 
interesting  and  instructive  to  consider  in  what  sort  the 
novelty  was  to  which  Johnson  objected.  The  con- 
sideration will  probably  be  helpful  beyond  the  bounds 
of  the  country  churchyard.  It  is  true  that,  in  Johnson's 
life  of  Gray,  the  Elegy  was  honourably  excepted  from 
the  critic's  depreciation  of  the  poet  :  '  Had  Gray 
written  often  thus,  it  had  been  vain  to  blame,  and 
useless  to  praise  him'.  It  was  against  the  Odes  more 
particularly  and  their  innovating  metrical  experiments 
— the  so-called  '  Pindaric  '  structure  in  place  of  the 
'  heroic  couplet ' — that  Johnson's  shaft  was  directed. 
These  Odes  were  alleged  by  Bishop  Warburton  {d.  1779), 
Pope's  literary  executor,  and  a  partisan  ex  officio  of 
Pope's  verse,  to  be  '  understood  as  well  as  the  works  of 
Milton  and  Shakespeare,  which  it  is  the  fashion  to 
admire  '  ;  and  the  faint  praise  and  quaint  imputation 
may  be  accepted  as  a  type  of  Gray's  estimation  in 
his  own  age.  Thus,  it  is  no  betrayal  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
case  against  Gray  to  examine  this  charge  of  a  new 
dulness  in  connection  with  the  better-known  poem. 

At  first  sight,  the  '  new  '  features  are  not  marked. 
Certainly,  we  are  taken  into  the  country  ;  the  town  and 
its  wits  are  left  behind,  and  there  is  an  effort  at  last, 
as  sincere,  approximately,  as  Watteau's,  to  break 
down  the  Fleet  Street  convention,  and  to  shift — not 
Dr.  Johnson  himself — but  the  literature  of  which  he 
was  the  centre  to  new  and  less  familiar  surroundings. 


i8    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Still,  the  townsman's  prejudices  are  consulted.  The 
dead  leaves  and  the  mud  are  swept  away.  It  is  essenti- 
ally a  townsman's  countryside  to  which  Gray  ventures 
to  invite  us,  with  conventional  images  and  properties, 
idealized  out  of  all  possibility  of  shocking  his  trained 
susceptibilities.  The  tolling  curfew,  the  lowing  herd, 
the  droning  beetle,  and  the  moping  owl  are  just  what  he 
would  expect  to  see  and  hear,  just  the  correct  selection 
to  create  a  rural  illusion  in  the  eighteenth- century 
mind.  An  equal  avoidance  of  surprises  characterizes 
the  human  note.  The  cottage  interior  is  modelled 
after  the  best  pattern  of  pastoral  sentiment ;  the 
housewife  is  busy  and  clean,  the  children  await  their 
'  sire  ',  and  a  fire,  whether  of  wood  or  coal,  is  '  blazing  ' 
on  the  hearth.  Further,  the  diction  is  congruous 
with  the  propriety  of  the  picture  as  a  whole.  A 
scholarly,  almost  pompous,  Latinity  defers  to  the 
reader's  taste,  and  if  the  epitaph  at  the  close  is  a  trifle 
too  decorous  and  frigid,  at  least  it  does  not  offend  by 
reeking  of  the  common  soil. 

Yet  there  is  this  novelty  to  set  ofi  against  the  classical 
tradition  :  the  poor  and  the  meek  are  exalted,  if  not  in 
their  stations  in  life,  at  any  rate  in  their  homely  graves. 
Wit  and  fashion  are  reminded,  through  the  medium  of 
their  own  classic  speech,  of  the  common  fate  of  vulgar 
death.  The  perception  is  not  in  modern  sort.  We 
whose  feelings  have  been  lacerated  by  slum-novels  and 
*  realistic  '  poems,  till  a  kind  of  self-defensive  callousness 
is  engendered  to  protect  us  at  last,  turn  back  to  the 
Elegy  with  delight.     Its  theme  of  the  universal  vanity 


HEIRS  AND  ASSIGNS  19 

soothes  without  irritation  ;  it  is  not  exacting  in  its 
demands  ;  it  does  not  require  us  to  reform  our  poor  law, 
or  our  pensions,  or  our  drainage ;  at  the  most  it 
'  implores  the  passing  tribute  of  a  sigh ',  and  then 
its  earliest  readers  were  dismissed,  as  after  a  sermon, 
with  a  pleasing  sense  of  an  obligation  discharged  in  a 
thoroughly  well-bred  fashion.  If  we  recall  how,  less 
than  twenty  years  after  the  publication  of  the  Elegy, 
James  Hargreaves'  house  and  machinery  were  de- 
stroyed by  the  mob,  this  little  sidelight  let  in  from 
England's  industrial  condition  will  show  how  remote 
from  actuality  was  Gray's  acquaintance  with  the  lot  of 
the  poor.  The  new  order  tugged  in  one  direction,  but 
by  taste,  affinity,  and  tradition  he  retired  to  his  scholar's 
seclusion. 


§2.  GEORGE  CRABBE. 

A  re-  "T  TERY  difEerent  in  this  respect  was  the  daring 
^^J  V  indignation  of  George  Crabbe  (1754-1832)1. 
*^-  Collins  died  when  he  was  five  years  old,  and  Gray  when 
he  was  seventeen,  and  the  temptations  and  hesitancies 
to  which  the  elder  poets  had  listened  and  deferred,  the 
half-timid,  half-venturesome  intelligence  with  which 
they  had  looked  out  from  their  cloisters  on  a  new 
world  blushing  to  a  new  spring,  their  coy  yet  artful 
resolves  to  break  away  from  the  Pope  conventions, — 
the  papal  infallibility  of  Reason, — their  fresh,  shy 
observation  conveyed  in  such  serious  wise,  the  kind  of 
virginity  which  restrained  even  their  boldest  advances 
in  matter  or  form,  were  all  overborne  and  swept  away 
on  the  copious  streams  of  verse  which  the  younger 
poet  poured  out  through  his  long  and  active  career. 
In  respect  to  metrical  devices,  he  was  an  innovator 
without  experimentation.  He  found  the  heroic  couplet 
at  hand,  as  a  serviceable  and  familiar  poetic  weapon, 

^  Oeorge  Crabbe  :  Poems,  Edited  by  Adolphus  William  Ward, 
Litt.D.,  Hon.  LL.D.,  F.B.A.,  Master  of  Peterhouse.  3  vols.  Cam- 
bridge University  Press,  1905. 

Oeorge  Crabbe  and  his  Times,  1754-1832 :  a  Critical  and  Bio- 
graphical Stvdy.  By  Ren6  Huchon.  Translated  from  the  French 
by  Frederick  Clarke,  M.A.     John  Murray,  1907. 


GEORGE  CRABBE  21 

and  he  manipulated  it  to  his  own  purpose.  When  it 
emerged  from  his  use,  it  was  a  new  form  of  verse.  In 
respect  to  style,  he  may  be  called  a  realist  without 
theories.  In  the  works  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, 
his  greater  contemporaries,  we  shall  be  sated  with 
theorizing  about  poetics.  Crabbe  was  naifvely  content 
to  practise  what  others  preached. 

It  is  difficult  to  draw  a  line  in  time  between  the  new  The 
age  and  the  old  ;  the  dates  and  the  facts  do  not  always  musa. 
correspond.  The  true  distinction  resides  in  states  of 
feeling  and  of  temperament,  and  a  key  to  this  difference 
is  found  in  the  contrast  between  Gray's  Elegy  (1750)  or 
Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village  (1769)  and  Crabbe's  The 
Village,  in  two  books,  of  1783.  The  separation  in  time 
is  negligible  ;  little  more  than  twelve  years  divided  the 
two  last,  and  the  more  remarkable,  accordingly,  is 
the  opposition  in  their  points  of  view.  Gray's  pastoral 
we  have  briefly  examined  ;  turning  to  Goldsmith's,  we 
note  that  it  was  inscribed  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds, 
and  that  Dr.  Johnson  wrote  the  last  four  verses,  thus 
ranging  it  definitely  on  the  side  of  the  classical  tradition. 
It  is  more  important  to  note  that  the  poet's  purpose 
was  political.  For  four  or  five  years  he  had  observed, 
in  his  '  country  excursions  ',  a  depopulation  of  the 
country,  or,  as  we  call  it  now,  the  signs  of  a  rural  exodus. 
Goldsmith,  let  us  say  at  once,  was  an  Irishman  resident 
in  London,  and  a  member  of  Johnson's  club.  He  had 
written  The  Traveller,  The  Citizen  of  the  World,  and 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  and,  his  financial  troubles  tem- 
porarily over,  he  had  settled  in  the  Temple  to  write 


22  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

biograpliies  and  histories,  and  gay  comedies  for  Co  vent 
Garden.  In  this  busy  literary  life,  with  its  urban 
friendships  and  distractions,  it  is  likely  that  '  country 
excursions  '  would  be  partly  reminiscent  and  partly 
superficial.  There  was  nothing  in  his  preparation  for 
The  Deserted  Village  which  resembled  the  training  and 
experience  of  Crabbe,  the  SufEolkshire  poet.  It  is  one 
thing  to  write,  like  Goldsmith,  of  the  idyllic  village 
preacher  who  was  '  passing  rich  with  forty  pounds  a 
year ' ;  it  is  another  thing  to  grow  up  like  Crabbe,  as 
one  of  many  children  born  to  an  obscure  customs- 
officer  whose  yearly  salary  was  one-fourth  of  that  sum. 
The  one  may,  perhaps,  be  said  to  appeal  to  the  literary 
sense,  and  the  other  to  the  literal ;  and  the  contrast 
between  the  two  will  be  found  in  the  poems  we  are 
considering. 

Despite  the  political  theme  which  lent  direction  to 
his  musings.  Goldsmith  does  not  get  away  from  the 
pastoral  view  of  the  country.  The  stock  epithets  and 
diction  are  utilized  in  full.  The  '  labouring  swain '  is 
cheered   by   plenty   and   health,   precisely   as   Gray's 

*  forefathers  '  had  driven  their  team  in  '  jocund  '  mood. 
The  same   '  sober  '  herd  went  '  lowing  o'er  the  lea  '  ; 

*  village  statesmen ',  own  brothers  to  the  '  village- 
Hampden  '  of  Gray,  '  talked  with  looks  profound ',  and 
'  the  breezy  covert  of  the  warbling  grove  '  was  com- 
posed in  the  echo  of  '  the  breezy  call  of  incense-breathing 
morn '.  The  lament  at  the  depopulation,  ascribed, 
in  the  dedicatory  epistle,  to  '  the  increase  of  our 
luxuries',  is  heightened,  of  course,  by  lingering  reflections 


GEORGE  CRABBE  23 

on  the  decline  from  a  golden  age,  but  how  savage  in 
efEect  is  the  satire  with  which  Crabbe  crushed  the 
whole  illusion  a  brief  dozen  years  after — 

On  Mincio's  banks,  in  Caesar's  bounteous  reign. 
If  Tityrus  found  the  Golden  Age  again. 
Must  sleepy  bards  the  flattering  dream  prolong, 
Mechanic  echoes  of  the  Mantuan  song  ?  ^  .  ,  . 
From  this  chief  cause  these  idle  praises  spring. 
That  themes  so  easy  few  forbear  to  sing ; 
For  no  deep  thought  the  trifling  subjects  ask : 
To  sing  of  shepherds  is  an  easy  task. 
The  happy  youth  assumes  the  common  strain, 
A  nymph  his  mistress,  and  himself  a  swain;  .  .  . 
I  grant  indeed  that  fields  and  flocks  have  charms 
For  him  that  gazes  or  for  him  that  farms ; 
But,  when  amid  such  pleasing  scenes  I  trace 
The  poor  laborious  natives  to  the  place. 
And  see  the  midday  sun,  with  fervid  ray. 
On  their  bare  heads  and  dewy  temples  play ; 
While  some,  with  feebler  heads  and  fainter  hearts, 
Deplore  their  fortune,  yet  sustain  their  parts : 
Then  shaU  I  dare  these  real  ills  to  hide 
In  tinsel  trappings  of  poetic  pride  ? 

The  Village,  i.  15-48. 

From  this  challenge  there  was  no  appeal ;  for  this  A  troop 
courage  there  was  no  surrender.  These  peasants,  nessos. 
sweating  in  public  beneath  the  glare  of  the  noonday 
sun,  were  the  first  of  a  long  train  of  witnesses,  sum- 
moned by  Crabbe  from  the  fields,  to  rebuke  the  mere- 
tricious images  of  rural  plenty  and  rustic  innocence 
which  the  idea  of  the  country  had  been  employed  to 

^  So  Cowper  wrote  of  Pope  in  Table  Talk  that  he — 

Made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art. 

And  every  warbler  has  the  tune  by  heart. 


24    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

evoke.  They  came  in  their  squalor  and  their  rags, 
hardly  even  pathetic  in  their  viciousness,  for  pathos 
itself  deludes,  from  The  Parish  Register,  and  The 
Borough,  from  Tales  in  Verse  and  the  Tales  of  the  Hall, 
insisting,  as  their  poet's  power  matured,  as  he  relaxed 
more  and  more  the  hampering  bonds  of  the  heroic 
couplet,  and  even  developed  at  last  a  sense  of  drama 
as  well  as  of  description,  of  composition  as  well  as 
of  detail,  upon  the  self-helplessness  of  their  condition 
and  the  duty  incumbent  on  authority  to  ameliorate 
their  lot. 

And  they  came  with  steel  beneath  their  rags.  Not 
the  alms  of  the  charitable  would  appease  them,  but 
Factory  Acts  to  fix  their  hours  of  work.  Reform  Acts 
to  help  them  to  self-government,  Education  Acts  to 
teach  their  children,  a  Poor  Law  to  constrain  the  rich, 
and,  later,  a  Pension  Act,  and  free  meals,  and  even 
protection  against  foreign  skill.  All  this  was  implicitly 
contained  in  Crabbe's  rejection  of  the  '  tinsel  trap- 
pings ',  and  in  his  awakening  from  the  long  dream  of 
a  countryside  garnished  for  town  tastes.  Crabbe 
stands  between  the  old  and  the  new  in  an  almost  grim 
isolation.  He  was  a  man  of  science  who  expressed 
himself  in  poetry,  and  a  satirist  who  became  a  clergy- 
man, and  the  paradox  of  his  career,  no  less  than  the 
hardship  of  his  experience,  is  reflected  in  his  verse.  It 
is  awkward,  uneven,  and  uninspired.  Its  best  admirers 
do  not  claim  for  it  any  imaginative  power,  or  any 
transforming  genius.  What  he  saw  he  wrote  ;  and 
his  vision  was  a  botanist's,  fixed  chiefly  on  the  ground. 


GEORGE  CRABBE  25 

He  missed,  in  the  older  generation,  the  comfortable 
compromise  with  reason,  the  behef,  as  Edward  Young 
said,  satirizing  the  philosophy  of  his  age,  in  '  a  Deity 
that's  perfectly  well-bred ',  and  the  conformity  with 
Pope's  rational  standard,  '  true  wit  is  Nature  to  advan- 
tage dress'd '.  And  he  missed,  in  the  younger  genera- 
tion, the  reconcilement  to  be  sought  from  a  wider 
range  of  observation  and  a  deeper  dip  of  interpretation. 
His  method  was  cumulative,  not  selective.  He  added 
detail  to  detail,  till  the  very  weight  of  his  evidence 
carried  the  confirmation  of  its  truth.  But  it  brought 
weariness  too  ;  so  much  effort  was  spent  in  demon- 
stration that  the  springs  of  reflection  were  exhausted. 
The  reader  abandoned  the  struggle  against  the  pessim- 
ism and  the  gloom  ;  his  constructive  and  recuperative 
powers  proved  unequal  to  the  strain,  and  Crabbe  was 
neglected  and  laid  aside. 

This  is  hardly  a  matter  for  surprise.  His  Village 
was  published  in  1783,  and  the  Tales  of  the  Hall  in  1819, 
and  any  progress  that  may  be  marked  in  Crabbe's 
talents  and  capacities,  as  displayed  at  these  two  dates, 
is  very  far  from  commensurate — is  incommensurate 
in  kind  and  in  degree — with  the  development  of  litera- 
ture during  the  same  period.  The  French  Revolution 
had  intervened,  and  the  battles  of  Trafalgar  and 
Waterloo,  and  changes  no  less  far-reaching  had  occurred 
in  the  intellectual  plane.  To  all  these  Crabbe  showed 
a  stubborn  front,  and  his  tenacious  and  inelastic 
realism  repelled  the  sympathies  of  the  new  age.  In 
recent  years,  his  admirers  have  revived.     The  similar 


26    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

method  of  Thomas  Hardy,  in  analysing  the  psychology 
of  Wessex,  though  relieved  by  a  finer  humom:  and 
a  truer  art-instinct,  may  have  helped  to  repair  ap- 
preciation. In  permanent  value,  however,  Crabbe 
must  always  be  important  on  account  of  the  sincerity 
and  daring  with  which  he  depicted  rural  life,  and 
exposed  incidentally  the  pastoral  fallacy  in  English 
poetry. 
After  Crabbe,  standing  apart  from  the  finer  sensibilities 
of  his  age,  found  no  disciples  or  successors.  But 
Robert  Bloomfield  (1766-1823)  and  John  Clare  (1793- 
1864),  though  not  approaching  him  in  force,  were  like 
him  in  the  fate  of  their  humble  and  obscure  origin  in 
rural  districts  of  East  Anglia.  A  third  poet  of  the 
people  rose  to  more  enduring  fame  at  the  end  of  the 
first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  the  person 
of  Ebenezer  Elliott  (1781-1849),  whose  Com  Law 
Rhymes  of  1828  were  the  intense  expression  of  the 
experience  of  his  own  long  manhood  in  the  workshops 
of  the  Black  Country  before  the  passing  of  the  Factory 
Acts.  He  was  the  poet  of  wrongs  and  sufferings  which 
issued  in  social  reform,  and  the  self-taught  labouring- 
man  is  honourably  distinguished  in  his  verse  by  a 
sympathy  with  his  own  kind,  by  a  perception  of  the 
sudden  contrasts  between  the  country  as  man  made  it 
in  industrial  England  and  the  natural  setting  of  those 
scenes,  by  his  observation  and  rendering  of  the  beauties 
of  nature,  by  his  vigour  and  his  music,  and,  above  all, 
perhaps,  by  his  extension — however  shrilly  in  places, 
and  with  whatever  want  of  mental  balance — to  crowded 


GEORGE  CRABBE  27 

cities  and  to  the  busiest  haunts  of  men  of  the 
rights  and  opportunities  claimed  by  the  'romantic' 
poets  for  the  '  statesmen '  of  the  Cumbrian  dales, 
and  for  the  flowers  which  blossomed  in  their  hedge- 
rows. 


note. 


§  3.  WITH  MANY  VOICES. 

EBENEZER  ELLIOTT'S  muse  has  taken  us  some- 
wliat  far  along  the  lines  of  social  discontent 
The  new  which  issued  in  the  Reform  Acts.  In  spite  of  Grabbe 
and  his  witnesses,  there  was  still  merriment  in  England. 
There  were  still  love-songs  and  wassailings,  and  ballads 
of  adventurous  deeds,  and  sighs  of  the  wind  and  sea, 
and  opening  buds  in  May,  and  tales  of  old-time  heroism, 
and  wonders  of  the  East  and  the  South,  and  human 
character  itself,  and  the  tragi-comedy  of  life  ;  and, 
when  once  taste  had  broken  down  the  barriers  of  Pope 
and  Dr.  Johnson,  and  Goldsmith's  '  country  excur- 
sions ',  and  Gray's  '  country  churchyard  '  were  admitted 
to  the  franchise  of  art,  poets  and  novelists  enough 
were  found  to  work  the  new  field.  They  wore  their 
rue  with  a  difference.  Something,  whatever  it  was — 
Rousseau's  influence  across  the  Channel,  or,  more  pro- 
bably, as  it  seems,  a  quickening  sense  of  self-respect 
among  '  hands  '  conscious  of  their  own  strength,  not 
merely  to  set  fire  to  their  masters'  dwellings,  but  also 
to  kindle  imagination,  the  fruitful  mother  of  reform — 
some  pervading  spirit  of  the  times  touched  the  novelists 
and  poets  to  sympathies  unperceived  before.  Litera- 
ture, subtly  moved  by  perceptions  turned  long  since 

38 


WITH  MANY  VOICES 


29 


to  the  uses  of  biology  and  psychology,  took  a  deeper 
and  more  tender  note,  and  discovered  a  remoter  signi- 
ficance in  the  common  things  that  lay  around  it.  Not 
Crabbe's  witnesses  alone,  but  a  chorus  of  sweeter 
voices,  rose  in  music  to  the  skies.  The  shorn  daisy, 
and  the  friendly  hare,  the  wee  mouse,  and  the  meanest 
flower — no  evidence  was  so  light  as  to  be  disregarded, 
no  link  so  weak  as  to  imperil  the  golden  chain  of  design. 
The  seed  sprang  in  many  places  ;  and,  returning  at 
this  point  to  the  '  new  '  note  detected  by  Johnson  in  the 
world  which  he  loved  so  well,  and  which  he  saw  crumbhng 
about  him,  we  may  carry  our  researches  a  little  farther. 
If  we  revert  to  our  first  list  of  names,  and  keep  mainly 
to  the  great  decade,  1770-80,  a  part  of  its  information 
may  be  rearranged  in  a  slightly  different  form — 


Name. 

Born. 

Birthplace. 

Lived  in 

Maria  Edgeworth 
William  Wordsworth 
Sir  Walter  Scott 
S.  T.  Coleridge  . 
Francis  Jeffrey  . 
Robert  Southey 
Jane  Austen 

W.  S.  Landor    . 
Thomas  Campbell 

William  Hazlitt 
Thomas  Moore  . 

1767 
1770 
1771 
1772 
1773 
1774 
1775 

1775 

1777 

1778 
1779 

Ireland 

Cockermouth 

Edinburgh 

(Devon) 

Scotland 

London 

Basingstoke 

Warwickshire 
Glasgow 

Maidstone 
Ireland 

Ireland. 
Lake  District. 
Scotland. 
Lake  District. 
Scotland. 
Keswick. 
Hants     and 

Wilts. 
Bath;  Italy. 
In    or    near 

London. 
Winterslow, 
Much  abroad. 

The  evidence  is  fairly  conclusive  that  the   centre  of 
literary  life  is  no  longer  fixed  in  London.     It   is  no 


30    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

longer  essential  to  frequent  cofEee-houses  and  clubs,  to 
follow  the  leader  of  a  clique,  or  sedulously  to  cultivate 
a  fashion.  The  flight  to  London  is  arrested.  Richard- 
son, Fielding,  Johnson,  Garrick,  Goldsmith,  Reynolds, 
and  the  rest,  though  born  in  various  parts  of  England, 
had  spent  their  busy  years  in  London.  The  metro- 
politan flavour  was  absorbed  as  an  ingredient  of  their 
wit,  and  life  in  the  provinces  was  '  provincial '  in  a 
sense  which  exactly  recalls  the  Augustan  tradition  of 
ancient  Rome.  This  had  not  always  been  the  case. 
Elizabethan  and  Caroline  writers  were  not  necessarily 
beyond  the  pale  if  they  wrote  at  a  distance  from  the 
capital ;  but,  during  the  eighteenth  century,  literary 
production  had  become  so  special  and  professional  a 
pursuit  that  London's  hospitality  was  sought  as  a  first 
condition  of  being  heard.  This  taste  was  fostered  by 
outside  causes.  In  the  early  days  of  reviews  and 
newspapers,  distribution  was  difficult,  and  their  in- 
fluence at  the  same  time  was  far  more  considerable 
than  it  is  now.  The  wits,  the  critics,  and  the  divines 
were  compelled  to  be  '  on  the  spot '  ;  rustic  comment, 
however  shrewd,  was  bound  to  be  behind  the  times. 
Moreover,  the  growing  conveniences  of  travel  were 
likely  to  operate,  at  first,  adversely  to  social  equality. 
The  man  who  cannot  afford  to  keep  a  motor-car  to-day 
is  far  more  effectively  cut  off  from  intercourse  with  his 
fellows  than  in  the  days  when  horse  traffic  set  the 
pace  ;  and,  similarly,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
when  the  squire  began  to  avail  himself  of  the  better 
means  of  reaching  London,  stay-at-homes  would  fall 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  31 

behind  in  the  competition  of  fashion  and  culture.  A 
temporary  or  permanent  residence  in  London,  with  all 
that  it  implied  in  better  sources  of  information,  and  a 
finer  wit  in  dealing  with  it,  became  a  necessity  rather 
than  a  luxury,  and  these  social  tendencies  encouraged 
the  concentration  of  Johnson  and  his  circle  on  the  little 
world  about  Fleet  Street  and  Covent  Garden. 

It  is  therefore  not  without  significance  that  some  of  The 
the  writers  who  were  children  when  Johnson  died  were  pation 
content,  as  they  grew  up,  to  forgo  the  set  habits  and  po^^try. 
the  sophisticated  opinions  of  the  town,  and  to  live  out  side, 
their  simpler  lives  in  rural  districts  of  England,  or  in 
the  North,  or  even  abroad.  They  found  their  material 
at  hand.  They  no  longer  felt  the  impulsion  which,  in 
the  older  generation,  had  driven  Johnson,  Garrick,  and 
Crabbe  to  seek  clubs  and  patrons  in  the  capital.  The 
change  is  quick  with  the  promise  of  new  skies  and  a 
wider  horizon  ;  and,  true  to  expectation,  a  little  group 
of  early  poets — harbingers  of  an  ample  spring — begin 
to  pipe  an  unaccustomed  note  in  English  coppices  and 
hedgerows.  More  pertinently  still,  far  away  in  AUo- 
way,  in  Ayrshire,  the  strong,  sweet  voice  of  Robert 
Burns  (1759-96),  who  flooded  Scotland  with  melody 
in  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  raised  in 
lyric  exaltation  of  the  poor,  the  lowly,  and  the  meek. 
We  cannot  pause  at  this  period,  full  of  interest  though 
it  be,  save  briefly  to  characterize  its  note  fin-de-si^cle. 
It  was  a  note  of  a  keener  sympathy  with  wider  classes 
of  society.  The  sympathetic  faculty  was  extended 
from  the  lower  orders  of  mankind  to  animate  and  even 


32    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

to  sentient  creation^.  When  once  the  principle  was 
admitted — and  the  breakdown  of  the  urban  convention 
contributed  to  its  admission — that  all  conscious  or 
seeming-conscious  life  is  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  sun  ; 
that  the  hodman  at  his  plough,  the  daisy  in  the  field, 
and  the  lover  with  his  lass,  are  alike  a  part  of  Nature's 
pageant,  sharing  passively,  even  if  not  actively,  in  her 
beneficent  and  universal  scheme,  then  the  bounds  of 
literature  were  enlarged  to  include  these  also  in  its 
survey.  Thus,  the  figures  symbolizing  the  transition 
from  the  eighteenth  to  the  nineteenth  century  are 
Cowper,  fondling  his  hare,  and  Burns,  confiding  in  a 
mouse. 
Independ-  How  far  this  enlargement  was  due  to  the  influence 
French  °^  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  (1712-78),  whose  philo- 
example.  sophy,  frankly  naturahstic,  represents  the  speculative 
side  of  the  revolutionary  movement  in  France,  is  a 
question,  already  referred  to,  which  it  is  difficult  to 
answer  What  is  meant  by  influence,  in  the  first  place  ? 
Rousseau  directly  inspired,  through  J^mile,  his  educa- 
tional treatise,  the  once  famous  Sandford  and  Merton 
(1783-89),  the  author  of  which,  Thomas  Day,  an 
eccentric  social  reformer,  sought  to  turn  Rousseau's 
doctrine  to  a  more  moral  end.  The  Man  of  Feeling, 
again,  the  chief  work  of  Henry  Mackenzie  (1745-1831), 
was  composed  in  the  vein  of  Rousseau's   sentimental 

*  Dr.  Darwin,  in  his  Presidential  Address  at  the  British  .Associa- 
tion in  1908,  lent  support  to  the  view  of  the  sentiency  of  plants, 
anticipated,  for  instance,  by  Wordsworth  in  1798.  The  whole  of  this 
field  of  speculation  has  been  mapped  out  by  members  of  his  family, 
from  Eraumus  Darwin  (1731-1802)  downwards. 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  33 

heroes,  and  most  of  the  floods  of  tears  which  were 
poured  through  English  fiction  at  this  time  may  be 
traced  to  the  same  well-head.  More  gratefully,  too, 
English  literature  refers  to  Rousseau  for  the  enjoyment 
of  the  Alps,  and  of  scenic  Nature  generally,  in  her 
wilder  and  more  sombre  shapes.  The  '  discovery '  in 
this  sense  of  Geneva  in  Rousseau's  Nouvelle  Heldise 
marks  the  beginning  of  Alpine  worship  and  of  the 
sense  of  mountainous  beauty.  The  perception  might 
be  vulgarized  and  overdone,  and  marred  by  a  hundred 
affectations,  the  most  obvious  of  which,  perhaps,  in 
the  years  immediately  succeeding,  was  its  cultivation 
for  its  own  sake  irrespective  of  circumstance  and  char- 
acter. Lovesick  maidens  turned  to  hills  and  deserts 
as  to  a  kind  of  universal  comfort,  with  a  sublime 
indifference  to  geological  or  psychological  conditions. 
So  far,  French  example  was  contagious,  but  at  the 
same  time,  though  the  sympathetic  sentiment  was 
reinforced  by  Rousseau's  naturalism,  and,  later,  by 
the  '  sansculottism '  of  the  revolutionaries,  its  rise  in 
England  was  spontaneous  and  independent.  England's 
own  industrial  conditions  and  social  development,  and 
a  certain  impatience  of  authority  in  the  literary  sphere 
engendered  by  a  too  long  devotion  to  the  rules  and 
artifices  of  a  school,  encouraged  the  expression  of  the 
same  ideas,  and  stimulated  at  many  points  at  once 
the  minds  of  writers  and  thinkers  towards  'liberty, 
fraternity,  equality'.  England's  'return  to  nature', 
— to  employ  a  well-worn  phrase  which  means  dif- 
ferent things  at  different  times, — her  return  to  a 
3  . 


34    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

simpler  standard  of  nature-study  at  first  hand,  was 
a  movement  springing  on  her  own  soil,  issuing  in 
several  directions,  industrial,  social,  and  artistic, 
and  chiefly  traceable,  perhaps,  in  the  lyrical  songs  of 
Burns. 

Literature  was  no  longer  set  to  the  standard  of  town 
taste.  Forms  and  cliques  were  losing  their  authority, 
and  writers,  accordingly,  were  set  free  to  reflect  what 
they  saw,  as  they  saw  it.  Birth,  death,  old  age,  the 
swelling  of  the  sap  in  spring,  the  innocent  gambolling 
of  lambs,  the  flute  of  the  nightingale  in  the  thicket, 
autumn's  fall  of  leaves,  the  life  quickening  under  snow, 
love  transforming  experience,  duty  inspiriting  love — 
these  themes  were  presented  to  the  men  of  letters  of 
the  day  in  a  fresh  and  an  unobstructed  guise.  No 
obstacles  of  convention  were  interposed  between  the 
writer  and  his  material.  London  and  a  Londoner's 
life  were  intellectually  remote  from  the  hills,  the  lakes, 
and  the  dales  whence  inspiration  was  gathered.  Even 
the  rumours  of  Paris  arrived  in  a  softened  guise,  in  a 
kind  of  beatific  transfiguration  of  the  actual  horror  of 
its  doings.  Burns  was  a  democrat  to  the  core,  and 
spoke  out  boldly  what  he  felt ;  but  the  bloodshed 
and  carnage  of  the  Revolution  have  plainly  been  purged 
with  hyssop  before  they  are  idealized  in  his  poems  to 
such  an  issue  as  the  following  : — 

A  king  can  mak'  a  belted  knight, 

A  marquis,  duke,  and  a'  that ; 
But  an  honest  man's  aboon  his  might ; 

Guid  faith,  he  mauna  fa'  that ! 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  35 

For  a'  that,  and  a'  that, 

Their  dignities,  and  a'  that. 
The  pith  o'  sense,  and  pride  o'  worth. 

Are  higher  ranks  than  a'  that. 

Then  let  us  pray  that  come  it  may — 

As  come  it  will  for  a'  that — 
That  sense  and  worth,  o'er  a'  the  earth. 
May  bear  the  gree,  and  a'  that ; 
For  a'  that,  and  a'  that. 

It's  coming  yet  for  a'  that. 
That  man  to  man,  the  warld  o'er. 
Shall  brothers  be  for  a'  that ! 

The  seers  arxd  interpreters  in  the  new  world  now  Objectivo 
opened  to  observation  followed  mainly  two  lines.  ™^^  ^^^' 
Remember  for  a  moment  what  was  happening,  not  only 
in  France,  but  in  England.  The  impetus  was  all  to 
get  away  from  the  cramped  and  narrowing  restrictions 
of  subject  and  style.  Human  passion  was  no  longer 
to  be  regulated  by  the  decorum  of  good  breeding  ; 
human  action  no  longer  to  be  confined  within  the  four 
walls  of  a  lady's  salon  ;  human  speech  no  longer  to 
be  guarded  by  the  mechanism  of  urbane  diction,  and 
human  sympathy  no  longer  to  be  measured  by  the 
familiarity  of  its  object.  Ways  of  escape  were  sought 
— ways  of  enlargement  and  refreshment.  On  the  one 
hand  the  method  was  objective :  the  appropriate 
means  were  foimd  in  far-off  and  unfamiliar  places, 
amid  novel  persons  and  surroundings.  Themes  and 
thoughts  too  wild  for  English  habits  were  introduced 
in  an  antique  guise,  or  in  Southern  or  Eastern  dress. 
A  new  convention  was  established,  and  imposed  for  a 
time  on  the  unread  and  the  incurious  public,  that  the 


36    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

manners  of  former  days  or  of  present-day  nations  in 
the  South  and  the  East  were  subject  to  a  kind  of 
authors'  licence,  justifying  every  imputation  of  aiitre 
temps  (or,  autre  lieu),  autres  moeurs.  A  past  and  a 
distant  were  constructed,  for  the  invasion  of  letters 
corresponding,  as  was  presently  realized,  with  no 
actual  conditions  of  history  or  society,  and  a  new 
literature  arose,  peopled  with  mysterious  heroes  and 
exalting  mysterious  heroisms,  which  succeeded  in  its 
primary  aim  of  taking  people  out  of  themselves. 
Subjective  The  second  method  was  subjective.  Instead  of 
ciwn.  flyiiig  *o  untravelled  lands  or  to  glamorous  periods  of 
time  for  the  mise-en-sclne  of  the  novel  emotions,  writers 
began  to  resort  to  the  metaphysical  region  beyond 
the  substantial  world.  They  explored  the  back  of 
experience.  They  endeavoured  to  abstract  from 
common  things  all  the  properties  conveyed  by  sense- 
perception.  When  visibility,  audibleness,  tangibility 
and  the  rest  had  been  removed,  there  remained  an  im- 
palpable abstraction,  an  essential  spirituality,  imper- 
ceptible to  the  senses,  which  delude,  but  imaginable 
by  faculties  of  the  emotions.  This  spiritual  recognition 
represented  phenomena  in  new  aspects.  The  dividing 
differences  disappeared.  Forms  cognizable  by  the  eye 
and  sounds  by  the  ear  were  assimilated  to  a  truer, 
because  a  deeper  and  a  more  abiding,  significance. 
A  bird's  song  was  absorbed  in  its  evidence  to  elemental 
joy ;  a  flower's  scent  and  form  were  resumed  in  ele- 
mental beauty.  The  incarnate  universe,  confused  by 
tens  of  thousands  of  shapes  which  opportunity  and 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  37 

circumstance  had  fashioned,  was  simplified  to  the 
arch-patterns  of  informing  design.  Take  a  few  ex- 
amples, selected  almost  at  random  from  the  poetic 
writers  of  this  time,  and  the  working  of  the  method 
will  be  clearer.  There  is  the  rapture  of  Wordsworth's 
vision  {Excursion,  i.  201-13) — 

Ocean  and  earth,  the  solid  frame  of  earth 

And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  in  gladness  lay 

Beneath  him : — Far  and  wide  the  clouds  were  touched. 

And  iu  their  sUent  faces  could  he  read 

Unutterable  love.     Sound  needed  none. 

Nor  any  voice  of  joy ;  his  spirit  drank 

The  spectacle :  sensation,  soul,  and  form. 

All  melted  into  him ;  they  swallowed  up 

His  animal  being ;  in  them  did  he  Uve, 

And  by  them  did  he  live ;  they  were  his  life. 

In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 

Of  visitation  from  the  living  God, 

Thought  was  not ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 

There  is  Shelley's  incorporeal  skylark-essence — 

The  pale  purple  even 

Melts  around  thy  flight ; 
Like  a  star  of  heaven 

In  the  broad  daylight 
Thou  art  imseen,  but  yet  I  hear  thy  shrill  delight. 

There  is  Blake's  quintessential  babyhood — 

Sweet  joy,  but  two  days  old ; 
Sweet  joy  I  call  thee ; 

Thou  dost  smile : 

I  sing  the  while. 
Sweet  joy  befall  thee  ! 

Again  and  again  it  recurs, — in  the  pages  of  the  literature 
of  this  age,  and  especially  in  its  poetry, — that  supreme 


38    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

transcendental  note,  in  which  an  attempt  is  made  to 
remove  from  objects  of  sense -perception  every  attri- 
bute apparent  to  sight,  hearing,  or  touch,  and  to  render 
the  imaginable  quaUties,  the  truly  qualifying  pro- 
perties, which  create  the  true  image  of  the  object,  in 
language  expressing  nothing  else,  nothing  accidental  to 
those  abstractions  ;  or,  as  Blake  wrote  in  his  Auguries 
of  Innocence — 

To  see  the  world  in  a  grain  of  sand 
And  a  heaven  in  a  wild  flower ; 

Hold  infinity  in  the  palm  of  your  hand. 
And  eternity  in  an  hour. 

Here  was  new  matter  enough  for  the  poets  of  the 
period  to  explore  ;  and,  if  the  first  method  fed  curiosity 
with  the  literature  of  mystery,  the  second  fed  it  with  the 
literature  of  mysticism.  To  these  twin  movements 
from  one  impulse,  attention  is  now  to  be  directed. 
Blake  and  Meanwhile,  it  is  instructive  to  note  that  the  founda- 
''^^^'  tions  were  laid  before  the  eighteenth  century's  close. 
There  is  a  kind  of  critics'  competition  for  the  place  of 
first  favourite  in  this  respect.  Thus,  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats, 
in  introducing  Blake  to  modern  readers,  writes  that 
his  '  poems  mark  an  epoch  in  English  literature,  for 
they  were  the  first  opening  of  the  long-sealed  well  of 
romantic  poetry  ;  they,  and  not  the  works  of  Cowper 
and  Thomson  and  Chatterton,  being  the  true  heralds 
of  our  modern  poetry  of  nature  and  enthusiasm '  ^. 
Perhaps  ;   though  it  matters  very  little  in  comparison 

^  Poems  of   William  Blake.     Edited  by  W.    B.   Yeats.     Muses' 
Library.     P.  rxiii. 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  39 

with  the  fact  that  the  long-sealed  well  was  opened 
and  the  magic  casements  were  at  last  unbarred.  We 
remember  single  lines  from  Cowper — 

He  is  the  freeman  whom  the  truth  makes  free, 
or — 

God  made  the  country,  and  man  made  the  town, 

or,  most  characteristically  of  all — 

I  know  at  least  one  hare  that  had  a  friend, 

which  show  that,  in  his  solitary  experience,  he  had 
lived  through  a  moral  revolution,  and  had  sought  to 
rebuild  society  on  a  simpler  and  a  humbler  basis. 
'  Alas  !  what  can  I  do  with  my  wit  ?  '  he  sighed.  *  I 
have  not  enough  to  do  great  things  with,  and  these 
little  things  are  so  fugitive  that,  while  a  man  catches 
at  a  subject,  he  is  only  filling  his  hand  with  smoke  '. 
And,  again,  in  his  verses  to  The  Castaway — 

We  perish'd,  each  alone ; 
But  I  beneath  a  rougher  sea 
And  whelm'd  in  deeper  gulfs  than  he. 

These  hints  are  sufficient  for  sympathy  to  construct 
the  sad  and  lonely  lot,  the  Ufe  on  a  broken  wing,  which 
befel  this  elder  poet ;  and,  sympathizing  thus,  we  can 
but  wonder  at  the  sense  of  equal  design  which  he 
worked  out  in  his  broken  musings.  The  note  which 
was  to  reverberate,  with  stronger  and  clearer  sound, 
through  Burns,  Blake,  and  their  successors,  however 
'  fugitive  '  and  though  to  no  '  great  things  ',  is  caught 
by  Cowper  before  them.  It  is  borne  on  the  same 
evening  wind,  sprung  up  in  the  twilight  of  the  eighteenth 


40    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

century,  of  which  Mr.  William  Watson  tells  us  in  an 
exquisite  elegiac  stanza — 

From  dewy  pastures,  uplands  sweet  with  thyme, 
A  virgin  breeze  freshened  the  jaded  day. 

It  wafted  Collins'  lonely  vesper-chime. 

It  breathed  abroad  the  frugal  note  of  Gray. 

Our  appreciation  of  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  heightened  and  quickened  by  listening  to 
these  frugal  herald-voices,  by  tracing  backwards  to 
Gray,  or  Collins,  or  Cowper,  or  Thomson,  the  earhest 
premonition  of  the  thought,  elaborated  in  later  writers, 
which  has  changed  the  very  texture  of  our  minds,  and, 
intellectually  at  least,  has  created  a  new  heaven  and  a 
new  earth. 
The  tend-  Lastly,  the  first  exponents  of  these  methods  were 
diffuse-  liable  to  extreme  diffuseness.  The  country  was  so 
ness.  novel  and  unfamiHar  that  the  pioneers  took  their 
work  too  seriously.  There  was  a  lack  of  order  and 
of  proportion,  shown  even  to  worse  advantage  by  its 
contrast  with  the  standards  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
which  deliberately  aimed  at  order  in  every  region  it 
explored,  from  Pope's  garden-plot  at  Twickenham  to 
the  Garden  of  Eden  itself.  There  were  no  ragged  edges 
in  that  scheme,  no  distances  or  dimness  ;  and  the 
strength  derived  from  such  limitations  was  transferred 
to  the  diction  of  literature  and  to  the  metres  of  poetry. 
Into  these  limits,  which  belonged  to  the  former  age, 
we  need  inquire  no  farther  than  to  note,  when  the  new 
territories  were  opened  out,  how  the  restricting  dams 
were  overrun.     The  limits  of  the  heroic  couplet  were 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  41 

completely  broken  down.  Crabbe,  who  took  it  over  from 
his  contemporaries,  handed  it  on  to  his  successors  in  a 
far  more  malleable  form ;  and  poets  more  skilled  than 
Crabbe,  who  frequently  used  no  better  device  for 
prolonging  the  argument  beyond  the  rhyme  than  a 
succession  of  relative  pronouns  or  other  obvious  terms 
of  conjunction,  manipulated  the  metre  so  well  that  its 
distich-character  disappeared  in  a  swelling  organ-roll 
of  melody  which  assisted  the  transition  to  the  richer 
prosodies  of  blank  verse.  Language,  too,  was  subject 
to  a  like  change.  The  diction  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  distinguished  by  clearness,  non-complexity,  and 
completeness.  Its  words  were  truly  and  squarely  set ; 
each  had  its  own  place  and  full  use.  There  is  a  brief 
passage  in  Coleridge  (1772-1834)  which,  treating  of 
this  very  theme,  exemplij&es  the  point  which  it  dis- 
cusses.    In  his  Lectures  on  Shakespeare  he  writes  : — 

Dr.  Johnson  used  to  say  that  in  the  most  unre- 
strained discourse  he  always  sought  for  the  properest 
word — that  which  best  and  most  exactly  conveyed 
his  meaning  ;  to  a  certain  point  he  was  right,  but, 
because  he  carried  it  too  far,  he  was  often  laborious 
where  he  ought  to  have  been  light,  and  formal  where 
he  ought  to  have  been  familiar.  Men  ought  to  en- 
deavour to  distinguish  subtly,  that  they  may  be  able 
afterwards  to  assimilate  truly. 

Subtle  distinctions  in  language,  requiring  words  with 
a  margin  of  meaning,  corresponded  to  the  new  perception 
of  emotions  unplumbed  by  experience,  of  wonder  in 
common  things,  and  of  tears  at  the  back  of  thought. 


42    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

There  was  no  space  for  such  vagaries  in  the  clear-cut 
prose  of  Dr.  Johnson  : — 

If  the  opportunities  of  beneficence  be  denied  by 
fortune,  innocence  should  at  least  be  vigilantly  pre- 
served. It  is  well  known  that  time  once  past  never 
returns  ;  and  that  the  moment  which  is  lost  is  lost  for 
ever.  Time  therefore  ought,  above  all  kinds  of  pro- 
perty, to  be  free  from  invasion. 

Analyse  this  extract  from  The  Idler,  and  we  see  that, 
in  the  Latin  and  the  Saxon  words  alike,  their  connota- 
tion is  exact  and  self-contained.  There  are  no  am- 
biguities, no  vagueness  ;  even  the  metaphor  in  '  pro- 
perty '  and  '  invasion '  does  not  relax  the  bounds,  or 
leave  anything  to  the  imagination. 

These  illustrations  may  carry  us  too  far,  but  they 
help  to  explain  the  relief,  frequently  manifest  to 
immoderateness,  with  which  the  frontiers  were  over- 
stepped. Men  expatiated  freely  in  a  new  air,  and  if 
they  happened  to  see  marvels  in  a  spectacle  which 
common  folk  find  commonplace,  if  they  cried,  like 
Jacob  in  the  wilderness,  '  Surely  God  is  in  this  place, 
and  I  knew  it  not ',  where  we,  repairing  their  vision, 
see,  not  Bethel,  but  Luz,  understanding  will  bring  con- 
donation, and,  with  the  clue  to  their  method  in  our 
hands,  we  shall  travel  with  securer  sympathy  through 
the  occasional  aridities  of  their  style.  The  masters  of 
the  nineteenth  century  conquered  in  a  very  few  years 
the  difficulties  which  its  material  presented  to  them. 
The  elements  of  composition  were  soon    acquired — 


WITH  MANY  VOICES  43 

order,  arrangement,  selection,  the  relation  of  ornament 
to  design,  and  the  elimination  of  the  inappropriate 
and  the  grotesque.  Strength  was  added  to  purpose, 
and  beauty  increased  with  use,  and,  with  this  certainty 
before  us,  we  may  enter  without  misgiving  the  paradise 
of  regained  romance. 


§  4.  PROSE  FICTION. 


Ann 

Radcliffe 
(1764- 
1823). 


'  Gothic ' 
romance. 


IT  needs  the  promise  of  the  paradise  to  resist  the 
languor  and  ineptitude  of  the  kind  of  literature 
which  is  typified  by  Mrs.  RadchfEe's  The  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho.  It  is  not  merely  the  burden  of  its  three 
hundred  thousand  words  ;  other  novels,  earlier  and 
later,  are  of  equal  or  even  greater  length.  But  in 
Udolpho  we  plunge  at  once  into  the  limbo  of  unbaptized 
romance.  It  is  all  there  except  the  soul  to  spiritualize 
the  separate  parts  ;  and  the  stage  properties  creak 
against  a  background  of  uninspired  talent. 

But,  all  deductions  notwithstanding,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  and  her  three  other  romances 
— A  Sicilian  Romance,  The  Romance  of  the  Forest,  and 
The  Italian — have  no  slight  importance  in  the  history 
of  English  fiction.  They  mark  the  rise  of  the  sensa- 
tional school,  which,  after  correcting  the  abuses  of  its 
earliest  practitioners,  was  destined,  through  greater 
writers,  to  acquire  qualities  of  strength  and  order,  and, 
allying  itself  with  the  school  of  character-study,  in  the 
Bronte  sisters,  for  example,  was  to  make  the  English 
novel  a  chief  medium  of  national  expression,  and  a 
chief  engine  of  moral  teaching  and  of  social  reform. 


PROSE  FICTION  45 

We  are  concerned  here  with  the  beginnings,  and  should 
note  that  the  mystery-mongers  belonged  to  the  school 
of  so-called  '  Gothic  '  romance,  an  epithet  derived  from 
the  period  of  its  antiquarian  properties,  and  applied 
by  extension  to  its  character  and  style.  Of  this  type 
The  Castle  of  Otranto  (1764),  by  Horace  Walpole,  Lord 
Orford,  was  the  most  conspicuous  example.  That 
once  famous  book  is  of  the  eighteenth  century  through- 
out, and  a  higher  level  was  reached  in  Vathek  (1784), 
by  William  Beckford,  traveller  and  connoisseur.  His 
romance  of  the  East  was  written  originally  in  French, 
and  was  translated  without  permission,  and  it  shows 
a  really  ingenious  use  of  supernatural  machinery 
employed  to  stimulate  and  encourage  the  romantic 
curiosity  of  the  age.  M.  G.  Lewis,  known  as  '  Monk  ' 
Lewis,  from  the  title  of  his  principal  work,  Ambrosio, 
or  The  Monk,  published  in  1795,  took  a  more  lurid  view, 
and  appealed  to  lower  passions. 

It  is  worth  while  to  inquire  more  closely  into  the 
making  of  this  kind  of  book,  and  the  mood  which  it  was 
intended  to  satisfy,  in  order  more  clearly  to  apprehend 
the  '  romantic  '  outlook  on  life.  An  interesting  clue 
is  afforded  by  Mrs.  RadclifEe's  frequent  quotations 
from  Thomson,  Collins,  and  Gray.  These  writers,  who 
had  died  respectively  in  1748,  1759,  and  1771,  were 
at  the  height  of  their  fame  very  near  the  years  of 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  activity  (1790-97) — too  near,  perhaps, 
to  permit  her  to  judge  with  true  discrimination  the 
value  of  their  contribution  to  thought.  It  is  plainly 
their  sentiment  which  seizes  her,  the  attractive  melan- 


46  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

choly  mood  in  which  they  sought  to  subdue  themselves 
to  nature  in  her  changing  aspects.  The  external 
features  of  scenery  are  painted  again  and  again,  and 
lead  to  enthusiasm  and  verse.  No  particular  ap- 
propriateness is  sought  in  the  circumstances  of  time 
or  place.  There  is  just  a  gush  of  feeling  issuing  in  a 
rush  of  words  : — 

'  The  evening  gloom  of  woods  was  always  delightful 
to  me  ',  said  St.  Aubert :  '  I  remember  that  in  my 
youth  this  gloom  used  to  call  forth  to  my  fancy  a 
thousand  fairy  visions  and  romantic  images  ;  and  I 
own  I  am  not  yet  wholly  insensible  of  that  high  en- 
thusiasm which  wakes  the  poet's  dream  :  I  can  linger 
with  solemn  steps  under  the  deep  shades,  send  forward 
a  transforming  eye  into  the  distant  obscurity,  and 
listen  with  thrilling  deHght  to  the  mystic  murmuring 
of  the  woods '. 

'  0  my  dear  father ',  said  Emily,  while  a  sudden 
tear  started  to  her  eye,  '  how  exactly  you  describe  what 
I  have  felt  so  often,  and  which  I  thought  nobody  had 
ever  felt  but  myself !  But,  hark  !  here  comes  the 
sweeping  sound  over  the  wood-tops — Now  it  dies  away. 
How  solemn  the  stillness  that  succeeds  !  Now  the 
breeze  swells  again  !  It  is  like  the  voice  of  some  super- 
natural being — the  voice  of  the  spirit  of  the  woods, 
that  watches  over  them  by  night '. 

Defective       The  want  of  depth  to  this  sentiment,  the  easy  tears 
ization.      i*  calls  forth,  and  the  loose  associative  language  of 
which  it  avails  itself  so  freely,  all  point  to  a  false  con- 
vention,  or,  rather,   to  a  convention  misapphed,   or 
never  properly  understood.     To  dethrone  the  '  reason  ' 


PROSE  FICTION  47 

of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  to  crown  '  feeling '  in 
its  stead,  was  a  simple  and  plausible  programme  in  an 
age  curious  about  itself  ;  but  the  un-moral  aim  of  Mrs. 
RadcliSe — her  delight  in  harrowing  for  the  mere 
horror's  sake — left  no  permanent  impression  when  the 
thrill  or  the  shudder  was  spent.  '  Emotion  remembered 
in  tranquillity ',  was  Wordsworth's  account  of  his  art ; 
emotion  manufactured  for  the  occasion,  was  the  height 
of  Ann  RadclifEe's  aim.  This  distinction  is  important, 
and  essential  to  a  correct  judgment  of  the  literature  of 
mystery.  Character  and  incident  are  kept  apart,  and, 
when  the  cultivated  sentiment  is  employed  to  justify 
action,  criticism  rebels  at  the  conclusion,  and  Mrs. 
RadclifEe  fails  in  the  first  instance  of  the  novelist's 
craft :  she  does  not  convince  the  intelligence  of  her 
readers.  Take  the  following  example.  St.  Aubert 
is  breaking  to  his  daughter  the  news  of  a  reduction  of 
his  income.  Emily  smiles  at  him  through  her  tears, 
and  St.  Aubert  conceals  his  face  with  his  handkerchief  : 

'  Besides,  my  dear  sir ',  she  urges,  '  poverty  cannot 
deprive  us  of  intellectual  delights.  It  cannot  deprive 
you  of  the  comfort  of  afiording  me  examples  of  fortitude 
and  benevolence,  nor  me  of  the  delight  of  consoling  a 
beloved  parent.  It  cannot  deaden  our  taste  for  the 
grand  and  the  beautiful,  nor  deny  us  the  means  of 
indulging  it ;  for  the  scenes  of  nature — those  sublime 
spectacles,  so  infinitely  superior  to  all  artificial  luxuries  ! 
are  open  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  poor  as  well  as  of  the 
rich.  Of  what,  then,  have  we  to  complain,  so. long  as 
we  are  not  in  want  of  necessaries  ?     Pleasures,  such  as 


48  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

wealth  cannot  buy,  will  still  be  ours.  We  retain,  then, 
the  sublime  luxuries  of  nature,  and  lose  only  the 
frivolous  ones  of  art '. 


Then,  '  he  caught  Emily  to  his  bosom,  their  tears 
flowed  together  .  .  .  After  this  language  of  the  heart, 
all  other  would  have  been  feeble,  and  they  remained 
silent  for  some  time  '.  But  we  have  an  uneasy  sense 
that  neither  the  '  language  of  the  heart '  nor  the  silence 
of  the  tongue  is  a  true  expression  of  character.  The 
constructive  principle  is  not  developed. 

When  we  pass  from  the  earlier  portion  of  the  book, 
in  nineteen  desultory  chapters,  to  the  mysteries  of 
Udolpho  itself — '  the  Gothic  magnificence  of  Udolpho, 
its  proud  irregularity,  its  lofty  towers  and  battlements, 
its  high-arched  casements,  and  its  slender  watch-tower, 
perched  upon  the  corners  of  turrets  ' — a  like  dissatis- 
faction supervenes.  Partly,  this  sense  arises  from  the 
theory  of  the  mystery-novel,  which  postpones  the  ex- 
planation to  the  event  and  demands  a  credulous  reader. 
The  action  of  Udolpho  is  placed  in  1584,  and,  though 
Mrs.  Radclifie  took  no  pains  to  observe  the  probabili- 
ties of  history,  the  distant  date  was  employed  as  a 
sufficient  pretext  for  wild  improbabilities  of  manners. 
Doubtless,  at  the  date  of  its  appearance,  this  type  of 
fiction  had  its  uses.  It  took  readers  out  of  themselves, 
and  out  of  the  formal  way  of  their  own  lives,  to  shriek 
at  ghosts  and  apparitions,  at  horrid  noises  in  the  night, 
and  to  quake  with  innocent  heroines  at  ingeniously 
grim  tormentors.    Better,  in  the  last  resort,  too  much 


PROSE  FICTION  49 

sensibility  than  none,  and  to  this  extent,  at  any  rate, 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  did  the  right  thing  at  the  right  time.  If 
certain  classes  had  to  be  shaken  out  of  a  smug  self- 
complacency,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  method  was  well  suited 
to  disturb  their  content.  On  the  other  hand,  she 
lulled  emotion  almost  as  soon  as  she  aroused  it,  or, 
rather,  by  trusting  exclusively  to  an  emotional  appeal, 
and  by  opposing  the  fiat  of  Gothic  castledom  to  the 
protests  of  the  intellect,  she  produced  a  mental  inertia 
which  each  of  her  books  prolonged  indefinitely. 


Her  much  greater  contemporary,  Jane  Austen  Jane 
(1775-1817),  achieved  more  by  trying  less.  She  seized  " 
the  spirit  of  the  movement,  of  which  Ann  Radcliffe 
only  saw  the  furniture.  Her  novels  are  hard  to  classify, 
though  easy  to  enjoy,  and  we  may  take  the  facts,  which 
are  brief,  before  trying  the  conclusions,  which  are 
hazardous.  Her  father  was  a  clergyman  at  Steventon, 
in  Hampshire,  and  her  life  was  spent  in  that  county, 
with  intervals  at  Bath.  She  died  at  Winchester  in 
her  forty-second  year,  but  her  genius  ripened  early, 
and,  though  none  of  her  novels  was  published  before 
1821,  three  at  least,  and  one  of  these  the  best,  were  more 
or  less  complete  in  manuscript  in  1798.  Thus,  the 
author  of  Pride  and  Prejudice  was  little  more  than  a 
girl,  and  the  more  remarkable,  accordingly,  was  her 
quiet  contentment  with  the  limitations  of  experience 
4 


50    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  surroundings.  That  it  was  a  quiet,  an  acquiescent, 
contentment,  not  a  mere  passive  receptivity,  is  im- 
portant to  the  understanding  of  her  art.  The  rural 
parsonage  and  the  narrow  life  might  not  have  been  her 
choice,  had  the  power  of  choosing  been  offered  to  her  ; 
but  she  was  too  wise  to  fret  at  restrictions  which  she 
was  too  observant  to  ignore.  She  employed  her 
faculties  upon  them.  There  were  men  and  women,  after 
all,  within  her  sphere  of  observation,  and  many  shapes 
of  love  and  death,  and  pity,  and  hope,  and  fear.  If 
Gray  had  enlarged  the  bounds  of  a  country  churchyard, 
and  had  shown  a  forgetful  generation  that  virtue  and 
vice,  and  the  infinite  interplay  of  conduct,  may  be 
great  even  in  little  men,  so  this  daughter  of  a  country 
parsonage,  reading  more  truly  than  Mrs.  Radcliffe  the 
hints  of  the  new-time  poets,  sat  down  quietly  to  the 
task  of  rendering  in  this  sense  the  features  of  the  life 
around  her.  She  possessed  the  cosmic  touch,  which 
is  nothing  but  order,  or  proportion,  applied  to  the 
comedy  of  life.  So,  out  of  the  drawing-rooms,  and 
parlours,  and  the  corners  of  the  hunting-field  which 
she  knew,  she  drew  the  threads  together  in  a  clear  and 
composite  pattern.  If  folly  or  prudence  had  suffered 
the  extreme  punishment  or  reward,  she  re-arranged  the 
scene  and  grouped  the  figures  afresh,  so  as  to  exhibit  on 
her  own  small  stage  the  ideal  and  universal  process 
which  nature  works  out  at  large,  and,  most  often, 
beyond  human  view.  Thus,  a  wholesome  leaven  of 
common  sense  and  a  rare  faculty  of  imagination  helped 
her,  despite  tradition,  and  despite  the  reaction  from 


PROSE  FICTION  51 

tradition,  to  join  in  a  perfect  synthesis  the  irre- 
concilables  of  a  former  generation — romance  and  a 
country  life. 

At  the  same  time,  there  was  no  glamour  in  her 
scheme  ;  it  was  excluded  by  the  limits  which  she 
accepted,  and  its  absence  creates  an  impression  of 
eighteenth-century  tradition  which  is  more  illusory  than 
just.  Miss  Austen  belongs  to  the  new  age,  and  is  a 
foremost  exponent  of  its  principles,  by  the  indefeasible 
right  of  her  conquest  of  new  territories  for  art.  She 
enfranchised  the  parsonage  and  the  villa,  as  they 
existed  a  hundred  years  ago.  Rejecting  instinctively 
the  machinery  of  the  romantic  novelist  as  beyond  the 
scope  of  her  characters,  ridiculing,  though  without 
harshness,  the  methods  and  admirers  of  Mrs.  RadclifEe, 
and  the  sentimental  female  of  her  school,  Jane  Austen 
held  up  the  mirror  to  human  nature  as  she  knew  it. 
Her  tea-parties  lacked  the  wit  of  Dr.  Johnson  and 
Mrs.  Thrale ;  her  love-scenes  were  not  expanded 
beyond  the  capacity  of  her  lovers  ;  even  their  rare 
elopements  received  no  meretricious  decoration  ;  her 
rustics  were  as  indifferent  to  rusticity  as  rustics  genuinely 
are  ;  and  fate  depended  on  character  with  a  sureness 
which  left  no  room  for  sentimental  vapourings  or 
repining.  The  style  of  the  eighteenth  century  is 
touched  to  a  simpler  mode  by  the  finer  perception 
of  nineteenth  century  sympathy.  It  is  not  an  ad- 
venturous world,  not  even  a  world  of  rapid  movement, 
to  which  Jane  Austen  invites  us.  A  social  introduction 
is  formidable,  a  visit  is  a  serious    undertaking,    the 


52    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

writing  of  a  letter  is  momentous.  '  We  have  dined 
nine  times  at  Rosings,  besides  drinking  tea  there  twice  ! 
How  much  I  shall  have  to  tell !  '  is  the  typical  reflec- 
tion of  a  typical  Austenian  young  lady. 

But  the  writer  conceals  her  art,  for  she  is  fully  con- 
scious all  the  while  of  the  littleness  of  her  little  people's 
bignesses,  and  in  this  sense  Miss  Austen  is  a  satirist. 
There  are  those  who  find  in  her  work  nothing  but 
prinmess  and  insipidity,  and  who  miss  in  her  narrow 
sky  the  light  of  her  delicate  humour  and  minute  ob- 
servation. To  these,  her  series  of  novels,  Pride  and 
Prejudice,  Sense  and  Sensibility,  Emma,  Northanger 
Abbey,  Mansfield  Park  and  Persuasion — if  an  order  of 
merit  may  be  suggested — will  fail  to  appeal  through 
their  gallery  of  characters  :  Elizabeth  Bennet,  sensible 
and  lovable,  who  taught  Mr.  Darcy  how  to  propose, 
and  stripped  the  schoolgirl's  ideal  lover  of  his  cloak  of 
elegance  and  affectation  ;  the  inimitable  Mr.  Collins, 
revealing  all  his  mean  nature  in  situations  etched  with 
the  delicacy  of  vignettes  ;  the  Bennets,  the  Bertrams, 
the  Woodhouses,  and  the  Dashwoods,  Lady  Catherine 
de  Bourgh,  and  Mr.  Norris — ,  the  palate  cloyed  with 
sentiment  and  the  appetite  sated  with  horrors  repair 
to  Miss  Austen  for  refreshment,  and  find  in  the  humours 
and  foibles  of  her  faithfully  portrayed  countryfolk  a 
wisdom  perfectly  proportioned  and  a  wit  admirably 
adjusted  to  the  skill  of  the  writer  and  the  demands  of 
her  material. 


PROSE  FICTION  53 


m. 


Somewliat  similar  m  kind,  thousli  with  more  of  a  Mana 
1       X  •  1  ^    TIT      •     Edge- 

masculine  vigour,  were  the  Irish  romances  of  Maria  worth. 
Edgeworth  (1767-1849).  She  evinced  in  her  earlier 
books  a  very  filial  deference  to  that  eccentric  Irish 
squire,  her  father,  who  was  addicted  to  educational 
theorizing  and  to  the  study  of  French  philosophy. 
Though  she  lived  to  be  eighty-two,  and  was  writing 
through  most  of  her  life,  she  never  quite  lost  the  fear  of 
her  father's  pen  in  revision,  and  her  Parents'  Assistant 
(1796)  and  Early  Lessons  (1801) — the  latter  incorpo- 
rating Frank  and  Harry  and  Lucy  and  similar  tales — 
were  distinguished  by  a  moral  purpose  and  by  a  certain 
primness  of  treatment,  which,  though,  perhaps,  more 
obtrusive  than  the  present  generation  approves,  yet 
displayed  a  freshness  and  a  naturalness  and  a  deft 
originality  of  touch  still  attractive  to-day.  Miss  Edge- 
worth  worked  her  way  to  a  higher  type  of  moral  tales, 
addressed  to  an  older  audience  of  young  people,  and 
intended  to  arm  them  against  the  dangers  and  tempta- 
tions of  the  fashionable  life  which  she  portrayed.  Of 
these  the  most  notable  is  Belinda  (1801).  In  the  first 
twenty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Maria  Edge- 
worth's  hand  grew  firmer,  and  she  gave  her  talents  a 
looser  rein.  She  produced  in  The  Absentee  (1812)  and 
Ormond  (1817)  really  enduring  novels  of  Irish  life  and 
character,  racy  of  the  soil,  picturesque,  human,  and 
romantic,  and  comparable,  by  the  generosity  of  the 


54    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

greater  artist,  with  the  Scottish  novels  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott. 
William  Another  novelist  of  this  time  was  WUliam  Godwin 
novels.  (1756-1836).  He  is  chiefly  famous  to-day  as  the 
father-in-law  of  Shelley,  and  as  the  author,  in  1793,  of 
an  Enquiry  concerning  Political  Justice.  That  treatise 
was  passionately  admired  by  the  young  bloods  of 
revolution,  and  the  lofty  principles  it  professed  cloaked 
the  meannesses  of  Godwin's  character,  and  built  a 
serviceable  bridge  between  the  anarchy  he  sought  and 
the  freedom  which  he  preached.  His  novels  were  a 
kind  of  by-work,  and  the  first  and  best  of  them,  Caleb 
Williams  (1794),  was  likewise  political  in  scope,  and 
attempted,  somewhat  incoherently,  to  point  the  way 
to  social  reform.  With  St.  Leon  (1799),  Godwin 
entered  the  lists  of  romance,  and  paid  an  exhausting 
tribute  to  the  claims  of  sentiment  in  fiction.  Its  plot 
of  the  philosopher's  stone  and  the  elixir  of  life  ranges 
it  in  the  same  class  of  supernatural  romance,  in  which 
his  daughter,  Mary  WoUstonecraft  Shelley,  was  to  win 
far  higher  renown.  Her  Frankenstein,  a  tale  of  terror, 
published  in  1818,  remains  the  best  example  of  the 
Radcliffian  school,  for  it  combines  probability  of 
character  with  improbability  of  incident,  and,  by  a 
rigid  elimination  of  the  inessential,  it  seizes  and  retains 
a  hold  on  the  reader's  imagination. 
Minor  It  would  be  possible  to  pursue  romance  through  its 

less  enduring  manifestations  in  the  didactic  work  of 
Mrs.  Inchbald  and  Hannah  More,  and  in  the  more 
sentimental    novels    of    the    Scottish    writer,    Susan 


PROSE  FICTION  55 

Ferrier  (1782-1854),  to  whom  Scott,  in  his  large  gene- 
rosity, paid  yet  another  tribute  of  admiration.  There 
were  Robert  Bage  (1728-1801),  a  Godwinian  disciple 
in  the  generation  before  his  master,  and  Thomas  Hol- 
croft  (1745-1809),  a  similar  firebrand,  who  was  tried 
for  high  treason  in  1794.  No  particular  interest 
attaches  to  their  novels  to-day,  and  a  hke  oblivion  is 
threatening  the  later  work  of  William  Carleton  and 
Thomas  Croker,  two  students  of  Irish  Hfe  and  character  ; 
of  Samuel  Lover  (1797-1868),  a  more  distinguished 
Irish  writer,  whose  Handy  Andy  (1842)  is  still  familiar 
to  boys  ;  of  Lady  Blessington,  of  The  Keefsake,  and 
Mrs.  Opie,  of  Godwin's  school,  author  of  Father  and 
Daughter  (1801),  but  more  memorable  for  her  works  of 
piety  under  the  influence  of  the  Quakers.  A  more 
considerable  name,  before  we  part  with  the  forerunners 
of  the  Victorian  novelists,  is  that  of  Thomas  Love 
Peacock  (1785-1866),  who  was  poet  as  well  as  novel- 
writer,  and  whose  talents  were  employed  in  the  gradual 
perfection  of  a  scholarly,  almost  an  exotic,  style,  full 
of  whims  and  quiddities  as  risible  and  quaint  as  Sir 
Thomas  Browne's,  and  brilliant  with  the  fanciful 
humour  of  a  keen  and  fearless  social  observer.  His 
residence  in  Wales  supplied  the  colour  for  his  first 
novel.  Headlong  Hall,  which  appeared  in  1816,  and  from 
that  date  to  1861  Peacock  wrote  a  succession  of 
poems  and  tales — his  gifts  and  style  are  displayed 
most  characteristically  in  Crotchet  Castle  (1831) — which 
give  him  an  unique  and  a  firm  hold  on  the  affections  of 
the  cultivated  readers  for  whom  he  deliberately  wrote. 


§  5.  IMAGINATIVE  POETEY,  I. 


^Jif^}  ~DUT  it  is  in  the  poetry  of  the  age,  and  not  in  the 
-L'  development  of  prose  fiction,  that  we  trace  the 
true  course  of  this  movement.  The  mysteries  of 
Udolpho  led  nowhere  :  this  is  the  important  point. 
Its  spells  were  woven,  its  incantations  sung,  the  tears 
of  afflicted  damsels  fell,  hissing,  into  the  seething 
cauldron  ;  and  nothing  came  of  it  all.  The  stirred 
feelings  were  recomposed  ;  readers,  gradually  inured 
to  the  so-called  '  Gothic  '  convention,  grew  more  and 
more  difficult  to  rouse,  till  the  baser  motives  of 
'  Monk  '  Lewis  reinforced  the  sensational  appeal.  The 
degradation  of  the  type  was  inevitable,  for  it  struck 
no  permanent  note. 

A  more  definite  claim,  or  challenge,  was  made,  in 
1798,  in  Lyrical  Ballads,  by  S.  T.  Coleridge  and  William 
Wordsworth.  These  authors  affected  no  disguise  of 
their  ulterior  purpose.  They  used  the  sensational 
method  as  a  means  to  an  end  and  no  longer  as  an  end 
in  itself.  They  aimed  at  society  through  conduct ; 
the  new  high-road  to  social  reform  was  along  the  strait 
way  of  character.  With  due  seriousness,  they  pre- 
faced their  book  by  what  French  critics  call  a  'pi^ce 

56 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  57 

justificative,  or  a  special  plea  to  justify  its  appearance. 
Several  lines  of  departure  are  to  be  dated  from  this 
book,  wbich  sought  to  create  a  taste,  and  to  found 
precedents  for  poetry  ;  but,  in  respect  to  the  literature 
of  mystery,  with  which  we  are  immediately  concerned, 
attention  is  chiefly  to  be  directed  to  Coleridge's  famous 
ballad.  The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner.  In  this  poem, 
the  supernatural  machinery,  which  Mrs.  RadclifEe  had 
introduced  for  the  sake  of  shocking  the  senses,  as  a 
child  might  be  shocked  by  thunder  before  he  had  ascer- 
tained its  cause,  is  employed  with  better  constructive 
skill — more  artistically,  that  is  to  say — in  order  to 
emphasize  the  effects  of  causes  latent  in  character. 
The  method  of  mystery  is  allied  with  the  method  of 
mysticism.  They  pass  and  repass  imperceptibly. 
To  the  poets,  building  their  arguments  on  the  basic 
truths  of  conduct,  nature  manifest  was  wonderful ; 
the  rest  was  ornament  and  heightening.  The  super- 
natural in  Coleridge  is  less  supernatural  than  super- 
sensible. It  is  extra-ordinary  chiefly, — beyond  the 
experience  of  common  life.  Nature  might  conceivably 
include  it ;  it  might  be  true  in  an  unexplored  world  ; 
but  experience  must  enlarge  its  bounds  in  order  to 
admit  the  concepts. 

And  here,  with  no  closer  acquaintance  with  the 
contents  of  Lyrical  Ballads,  we  may  test  the  bond  of 
alliance  between  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.  Each 
sought  to  emancipate  art,  as  the  nature-interpreting 
medium,  to  release  it  from  shibboleths  and  formulae, 
and  to  find  a  language  to  express  what  is,  as  it  is,  for 


58  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ever.  Definite  certainties  had  been  affirmed  in  every 
department  of  knowledge, — set  out  in  trim  parterres, 
watered,  and  watched,  and  weeded.  The  unknown 
waited  to  be  explored,  over  the  hedges,  far  away, 
remote  in  the  fastnesses  of  nature,  near,  as  Jane  Austen 
saw,  in  the  hearts  and  homes  of  common  men,  half- 
hidden  in  self-revelation,  silent  in  the  music  of  the 
spheres,  and  viewless  in  the  radiance  of  the  universe, 
till  the  magic  of  poesy  unstopped  the  ears  and  eyes  of 
human  kind.  Minor  differences  matter  less  to-day. 
If  Wordsworth  left  the  imaginable  to  th,e  imagination, 
and  impressed  by  mere  description  and  narration  the 
effects  which  Coleridge  sought  by  concrete  images  of 
terror,  his  treatment  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  less 
imaginative  for  this  restraint.  The  value  of  Lyrical 
Ballads,  of  the  challenge  of  1798,  is  above  rather  than 
below  the  pretensions  of  its  authors.  It  swept  away 
all  the  cobwebs  which  the  eighteenth  century  had 
spun.  Wordsworth  himself  had  spun  them  in  some 
of  his  earliest  poems,  composed  in  the  metre  and 
the  spirit  of  eighteenth-century  writers.  But  to  the 
chapter  in  English  literature  which  opened  with 
Lyrical  Ballads  we  come  with  a  reasoned  faith,  with 
no  barred  windows  of  the  soul,  confident  that  a  voice 
will  be  found  for  each  starved  or  craving  emotion 
ennobling  the  judgment  of  man. 
Words-  A  few  lines  of  biography  are  required  before  ex- 

Coleridge  3'i^iiii^g  these  poems  and  their  preface.  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge  alike,  especially  in  early  manhood, 
were  particularly  sensitive  to  the  impressions  of  their 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  59 

times.  They  lived  in  an  age  of  great  events,  and 
they  possessed,  too,  the  rare  faculty  of  historical  in- 
sight, which  weighs  the  trivial  and  the  profound  with 
accurate  discernment. 

William  Wordsworth,  born  in  1770,  was  the  senior 
by  two  years,  and,  in  a  further  sense,  he  remained  the 
elder  till  the  end.  His  temper  was  naturally  less  pliant ; 
he  asked  more  than  he  gave,  as  husband,  brother,  and 
friend  ;  and  if,  in  every  union  of  true  minds,  there  is 
always  Vun  qui  aime,  et  Vautre  qui  se  laisse  aimer,  it 
was  Coleridge  who  played  the  active  part.  He  left  his 
family  home  in  Devonshire  to  settle  with  the  Words- 
worths  in  the  Lake  District ;  he  took  the  second  place 
in  the  poetic  partnership,  and  employed  his  critical 
faculty  in  the  service  of  his  fellow-poet.  In  brief, 
throughout  the  fellowship  Coleridge  gave  more  than 
he  received.  At  bottom,  it  was  a  difference  of  tempera- 
ments. Coleridge  was  unhappy  in  his  own  nature, 
while  Wordsworth  seemed  to  live  aloof  from  the 
accidents  of  fortune,  secure  in  the  constant  love  of 
Dorothy,  his  sister,  and  Mary,  his  wife,  and,  in  later 
years,  of  the  second  Dora,  his  daughter.  With  Cole- 
ridge's separation  from  his  wife  and  his  fatal  habit  of 
opium-eating  we  need  have  no  further  concern,  save 
to  trace  his  misfortunes  to  constitutional  ill-health. 
This  led  him  to  desultory  ways,  and  to  loose  and  casual 
living,  till  his  habits  embarrassed,  more  or  less,  the 
goodwill  even  of  his  best  friends. 

We  return  with  increasing  relief  to  the  records  of 
early  life.    There  was  the  brave,  impossible  plan  of 


6o    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

a  State  of  All  the  Liberties  on  the  Susquehanna,  the 
'  pantisocracy  '  of  a  young  man's  dream,  which  hurried 
the  three  young  dreamers — Coleridge,  Southey  and 
Lovell — into  an  early  marriage  with  the  three  sisters 
Fricker,  The  scheme  hardly  survived  the  wedding- 
bells,  and  Lovell,  the  latest  of  the  brothers-in-law, 
died  as  early  as  1796.  There  was  Joseph  Cottle,  the 
bookseller-publisher,  always  looking  out  for  talent, 
whose  timely  advances  right  and  left  were  so  welcome 
to  the  refractory  team  which  he  tried  to  turn  into 
the  way  of  steady,  respectable  royalties.  There  was 
Wordsworth's  sojourn  in  Paris,  when  the  revolutionary 
turmoil  was  at  its  height,  and  his  meeting  with  Michel 
Beaupuy,  the  chevalier  sans  feur  et  sans  reproche  : 
the  memory  of  the  republican  general,  mingled  with 
that  of  the  poet's  sailor-brother,  John,  inspired  many 
fine  passages  on  the  virtues  of  captains  of  men.  There 
was  Raisley  Calvert  and  his  legacy — the  name  has  no 
other  connotation — ,  which,  in  1795,  set  Wordsworth 
free  from  unsympathizing  guardians  to  settle  down 
with  Dorothy,  his  sister,  in  a  very  modest  manage  h 
deux.  There  was  the  later  home  in  the  Quantocks, 
amid  a  circle  of  friends,  and  the  ardent,  enheartening 
talk,  and  the  unconventional  ways,  which  aroused  the 
suspicion  of  neighbours  and  the  attention  of  a  Govern- 
ment spy.  There  was  the  poets'  visit  to  Germany  in 
1798-99,  when  Wordsworth  met  the  great  Klopstock, 
and  Coleridge  was  studying  Kant : 

Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive, 
And  to  be  young  waa  very  Heaven, — 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  6i 

is  Wordworth's  tribute  in  The  Prelude  to  the  illumina- 
tion of  those  years  ;  and  Coleridge,  writing  to  Godwin, 
in  March  1801,  declared  '  If  I  die,  and  the  booksellers 
will  give  you  anything  for  my  life,  be  sure  to  say 
"  Wordsworth  descended  on  him  like  the  yvoodi  asccvrov 
from  heaven ;  by  showing  him  what  true  poetry  was, 
he  made  him  know  that  he  himself  was  no  poet "  '. 
With  the  poets'  own  sentiments  to  guide  us,  it  is  no 
surprise  that  the  critic,  William  HazHtt,  their  junior 
by  a  few  years,  should  write,  after  a  visit  to  the  Quan- 
tocks,  that  the  poems  of  the  friends  conveyed  '  some- 
thing of  the  effect  that  arises  from  the  turning  up  of 
fresh  soil,  or  the  first  welcome  breath  of  spring'. 

We  come  back  to  1798,  and  to  the  two  young  poets  Ballads 
among  the  hills.  Miracles  were  happening  at  that  purpose. 
time  ;  Dorothy's  journal  is  full  of  them,  and  William  and 
his  friend  wrote  them  down.  The  procession  of  nature 
was  miraculous.  Pearls  dropped  from  peasants'  tongues. 
Distance  forgot  its  limits,  and  near  things  remembered 
their  kind.  The  friends  wrote  them  down,  and  talked 
them  over.  They  staked  out  the  ground  between 
them,  and  allotted  a  plot  to  each.  Coleridge,  according 
to  his  powers,  was  to  give  '  a  human  interest  and  a 
semblance  of  truth '  to  '  persons  and  characters  super- 
natural, or  at  least  romantic  '.  Wordsworth,  perhaps 
more  greatly  daring,  was  to  reverse  this  process.  His 
task  it  was  '  to  excite  a  feeling  analogous  to  the  super- 
natural '  by  rousing  men's  minds  from  '  the  lethargy 
of  custom ',  and  directing  their  attention  to  '  the  love- 
liness and  wonders  of  the  world   before  us '.    Thus, 


62    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

he  was  to  impart  the  '  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of 
every  day '.  The  one,  therefore,  was  to  humanize 
Ann  RadclifEe,  and  the  other  to  etherealize  Jane  Austen. 
Lyrical  Ballads  ^  was  the  result. 

The  foregoing  extracts  are  taken  from  Coleridge's 
own  account  of  its  inception  in  his  Biographia  Literaria. 
The  (1)  Preface  to  Lyrical  Ballads  was  revised  in  1800, 
when  Wordsworth  treated  it  for  the  first  time  as  a 
separate  essay.  He  added  (2)  an  Appendix,  in  the  form 
of  a  note  to  the  Preface,  upon  '  Poetic  Diction  '.  In 
1814,  he  wrote  (3)  a  Preface  to  The  Excursion  ;  and,  in 
the  following  year,  in  a  two-volumes  edition  of  his 
poems,  he  included  a  paper,  since  entitled  by  Dr.  Grosart, 
the  editor  of  Wordsworth's  prose  works,  (4)  '  Of  Poetry 
as  Observation  and  Description  ',  to  which  he  appended 
an  essay,  supplementary  to  the  Preface,  called  by 
Grosart  (5)  '  Poetry  as  a  Study '.  These  are  the  five 
sources  of  Wordsworth's  much-discussed  literary  criti- 
cism— his  ordnance-survey  of  Parnassus — ,  and  they 
are  reinforced  by  Coleridge's  works  in  prose,  and 
particularly  by  the  latter  part  of  his  literary  auto- 
biography ;  and  here,  though  the  ordnance-survey  is  less 
important  than  the  flowers,  a  reference  is  due  to  the 
theory  before  we  approach  the  practice — to  the  poetics 
before  the  poetry. 

The  new     Knowing  as  much  as  we  do  of  the  claims  of  mystery 
and  mysticism  to  replace  and,  at  the  same  time,  to 

*  An  exact  reprint  is  issued,  '  with  certain  poems  of  1798,  and 
an  Introduction  and  Notes  ',  by  Thomas  Hutchinson  {pptime  dt 
Wordaworihiania  meritug).     Duckworth,  2nd  ed.,  1907. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  63 

enlarge  the  vision  and  the  diction  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  recognizing  the  change  in  the  ideal  reflected 
by  literature  from  society  since  Pope  declared  in  his 
Essay  on  Man, 

The  bliss  of  Man  (could  pride  that  blessing  find) 
Is  not  to  act  or  think  beyond  mankind 

— the  essence  of  the  new  faith  being,  in  the  fine  phrase 
of  Robert  Browning  (1812-89),  to  '  write  a  book  shall 
mean  beyond  the  facts  ' — ,  we  are  less  liable  to  mistake 
the  tendency  of  Wordsworth's  revolt,  or  to  insist  too 
literally  on  the  professions  of  the  young  reformers  of 
1798.  Works  illustrating  their  teaching  had  still  to 
be  composed.  To-day,  that  teaching  is  adorned  by 
poetry  and  prose  which  have  passed  into  the  heritage 
of  western  civilization.  Time,  illimitably  just,  has 
raised  the  fruit  from  the  seed,  and  we  mark  the  applica- 
tion of  the  principles  revealed  to  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth through  a  century  of  English  literature.  Thus, 
this  anonymous  book,  originally  issued  as  an  '  experi- 
ment ',  remains  an  experiment  to-day.  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge  sought,  without  even  the  recommendation 
of  such  worth  as  the  publication  of  their  names  would 
have  conveyed,  'to  ascertain',  as  they  said,  'how  far 
the  language  of  conversation  in  the  middle  and  lower 
classes  of  society  is  adapted  to  the  purposes  of  poetic 
pleasure  '.  It  was  an  extension  of  the  literary  franchise 
thirty-four  years  before  the  Reform  Act,  for  the  '  rotten 
boroughs  '  and  monopolies  of  literature  were  even  more 
noisome  than  in  politics.  '  Gaudiness  and  inane  phrase- 
ology ',  according  to  these  reformers,  were  the  mark 


64    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  many  modern  writers.  Readers  accustomed  to 
such  style  would,  doubtless,  they  said,  '  enquire  by 
what  species  of  courtesy  these  attempts  can  be  per- 
mitted to  assume  '  the  name  of  poetry.  The  answer 
was  :  do  they  contain  '  a  natural  delineation  of  human 
passion,  human  characters,  and  human  incidents  '  ? 
If  so,  it  is  the  readers  who  are  at  fault ;  '  they  should 
consent  to  be  pleased  in  spite  of  that  most  dreadful 
enemy  to  our  pleasures,  our  own  pre-established  codes 
of  decision  '. 

In  this  Preface  is  the  pith  of  the  whole  argument. 
The  rest  of  Wordsworth's  critical  essays  is  little  more, 
in  efEect,  than  an  expansion  of  these  remarks  from  the 
Advertisement  to  Lyrical  Ballads.  The  '  language  of 
conversation  in  the  middle  and  lower  classes  of  society  ', 
in  its  relation  to  poetic  pleasure,  became  the  excursus 
on  poetic  diction.  The  '  natural  delineation  of  human 
passions  ',  etc.,  became  the  essay  on  poetry  as  observa- 
tion and  description  ;  and  '  our  pre-established  codes 
of  decision '  were  attacked,  at  considerable  length, 
and  with  a  high  degree  of  skill,  in  these  and  the  re- 
maining papers.  It  sounds  more  serious  than  it  is, 
for  its  main  interest  to-day  is  not  literary,  but  personal. 
English  literature  would  probably  have  sown  the  barren 
fields  of  eighteenth-century  thought,  even  if  Words- 
worth had  left  these  elaborate  essays  unwritten.  They 
were  required  for  his  personal  satisfaction,  for  the 
tranquillization  and  reconcilement  of  his  own  psycho- 
logical being.  He,  too,  had  sinned  with  the  Pharisees, 
and  he  repented  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  seeking  those 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  65 

symbols  of  atonement  from  the  homes  of  the  '  middle 
and  lower  classes '.  Confession  is  good  for  the  soul, 
even  artistic  confession  for  the  erring  psychologist, 
and  Wordsworth  sought,  by  open  recantation,  to 
restore  to  an  exhausted  world  the  depredations  of 
William  Godwin  and  his  votaries. 

For  the  author  of  Political  Justice  would  have  stripped 
human  life  bare  of  all  its  amenities  and  variety.  '  His 
system ',  as  Mr.  Hutchinspn  writes,  '  represented 
the  eighteenth-century  cult  of  reason  carried  to  the 
pitch  of  fetish-worship.  The  mind  must  be  scoured 
and  smooth  -  rubbed  and  stripped  of  all  habitudes 
whatsoever, — be  they  instincts,  natural  affections, 
sentiments,  prejudices,  or  principles.  There  must  have 
taken  place,  in  the  man,  a  complete  dissolution  of  all 
that  we  understand  by  the  words  moral  character, 
before  Godwin  will  allow  him  to  be  reckoned  one  of 
the  emancipated  ' ;  and  from  this  '  servitude  to  free- 
dom's name '  Wordsworth,  painfully  reconstructing 
his  faith  shattered  in  France,  sang  men  free.  In  the 
mood  of  Godwinian  reason  he  had  written  his  tragedy 
The  Borderers  (1795-96),  and  his  revulsion  from  those 
standards  to  the  wider  democratic  ideal  of  The  Excur- 
sion, 1814,  is  traced  in  considerable  detail  by  Professor 
!l6mile  Legouis  in  his  wholly  admirable  study.  La  Jeun- 
esse  de  Wordsworth  :  '  il  serait  aise  ',  he  declares,  '  de 
poursuivre  cette  etude,  et  de  montrer  Wordsworth 
reconstruisant  un  a  un,  par  I'observation  des  humbles, 
les  sentiments  dont  Godwin  avait  depouille  I'homme 
ideal '  (p.  316). 
5 


66    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 


The  Reviewed  in  this  light,  accordingly,  Wordsworth's 

and  The  literary  criticism,  as  such,  apart  from  the  occasional 
Prefaces,  interest  of  his  judgments  and  opinions,  is  the  prose 
version  of  the  poem,  in  which,  in  thirteen  books,  under 
the  title  of  The  Prelude,  he  traced  '  the  growth  of  a 
poet's  mind '.  This  work,  written  at  different  times 
between  1799  and  1805,  was  not  pubhshed  till  1850, 
the  year  of  the  poet's  death.  His  revision  of  the 
manuscript  was  continued  till  at  least  as  late  as  1832. 
It  was  intended  to  form  an  introduction  to  The  Recluse 
in  three  Parts,  of  which  only  The  Excursion,  designed 
as  Part  II,  is  complete,  and  thus  to  become,  as  Words- 
worth called  it,  the  '  ante-chapel '  to  his  '  Gothic 
Church  '.  In  a  sense,  it  was  a  kind  of  invocation — pro- 
longed and  pecuharly  conscientious — not  of  visionary 
muses,  but  of  the  powers  and  faculties  of  the  poet  who 
desired  to  employ  them  to  great  ends.  Meanwhile, 
his  examination  of  those  faculties  involved  a  theory  of 
poetics.     The  poet  who  was  to  dare  to  sing 

Of  Truth,  and  Grandeur,  Beauty,  Love,  and  Hope, 

And  melancholy  Fear  subdued  by  Faith ; 

Of  blessed  consolations  in  distress ; 

Of  moral  strength  and  intellectual  power ; 

Of  joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread ; 

who  was  to  recover  for  an  age  self-bhnded  by  its  own 
knowledge,  the  fabled  happiness  of  Elysian  fields — 

For  the  discerning  intellect  of  Man, 
When  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe — 


who, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  67 

In  love  and  holy  passion,  shall  find  these 
A  simple  produce  of  the  common  day ; — 

long  before  the  bhssful  hour  arrives. 
Would  chaunt,  in  lonely  place,  the  spousal  verse 
Of  this  great  consummation, — 


such  a  poet,  such  an  interpreter,  must  plainly  test 
to  the  utmost,  not  merely  the  faculties  of  his  mind, 
but  the  mechanical  implements  which  he  employed. 
Hence  The  Prelude,  in  its  thirteen  books,  of  the  growth 
of  a  poet's  mind ;  and  hence,  equally,  the  prefaces  from 
1798  to  1815,  with  their  plethoric  defence  of  the  '  choice 
of  incidents  from  common  life  '  and  the  '  selection  of 
language  really  used  by  men  '. 

It  is  all  written  in  the  poems,  for  those  who  have  the  Poetic 
wit  to  read.     Take  this  reprint  of  the  volume  of  1798,  aiism.^° 
designed  expressly  as  an  experiment,  and  consider  in 
the    light    of  these   conclusions    some  passages  from 
Wordsworth's  contributions.     There  is,  first,  the  right 
use  of  landscape,  and  the  moral  power  of  beauty : 

These  forms  of  beauty  have  not  been  to  me, 
As  is  a  landscape  to  a  blind  man's  eye : 
But  oft,  in  lonely  rooms,  and  mid  the  din 
Of  towns  and  cities,  I  have  owed  to  them. 
In  hours  of  weariness,  sensations  sweet. 
Felt  in  the  blood,  and  felt  along  the  heart, 
And  passing  even  into  my  purer  mind 
With  tranquil  restoration  : — feelings  too 
Of  unremembered  pleasure ;  such,  perhaps, 
As  may  have  had  no  trivial  influence 
On  that  best  portion  of  a  good  man's  Ufe ; 
His  little,  nameless,  unremembered  acts 
'  ^  Of  kindness  and  of  love. 


68    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  so-called  sensational  school  of  fiction — Mrs.  Rad- 
clifEe  and  her  friends — had  followed  the  wrong  road. 
These  resolute  disciples  of  Rousseau  had  affected  to 
treat  the  sublime  as  a  kind  of  patent  medicine, — so 
many  mountains  to  heal  the  wounds  of  so  much 
misfortune.  Wordsworth  tested  the  theory  of  the 
principle.  The  forms  of  beauty  were  to  pass  into  the 
mind,  and  to  issue  by  chemical  changes  in  acts  of 
good  conduct.  They  were  to  be  felt  '  in  the  blood ' 
and  '  along  the  heart ',  availing,  in  changed  sur- 
roundings, and  when  their  actual  features  were 
forgotten,  to  purify  the  springs  of  action.  The 
efficacy  of  scenery  was  not  its  forms,  as  the  efficacy 
of  education  is  not  its  facts.  The  value  of  each 
resides  in  its  power  to  mould  character.  If  the 
senses  are  exercised  on  right  objects,  then  '  emotion 
remembered  in  tranquillity '  will  make  every  man  a 
poet  in  soul.  These  sensational  stimuli  are  all  around 
us,  if  we  have  but  the  seeing  eye ;  Otranto  and 
Udolpho  are  no  wiser  than  the  hills  and  dales  of  our 
own  land.  Nor  is  it  only  our  imperception  which  is  at 
fault ;  our  doctrine  of  values  is  even  more  to  blame. 
We  have  been  taught  and  wrought  upon  to  despise  what 
is  honourable,  and  to  neglect  what  is  noteworthy.  So, 
the  slighted  is  to  be  restored  to  greatness,  and  the  un- 
remembered  to  memory ;  the  victims  of  the  vast 
proscription  are  to  be  summoned  from  their  nameless 
graves.  And  the  repaired  operation  of  the  senses 
will  lead  to  deeper  delights,  disused  by  the  smooth- 
rubbed  soul : 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  69 

Nor  less,  I  trust. 
To  them  I  may  have  owed  another  gift. 
Of  aspect  more  sublime ;  that  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery. 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world 
Is  lighten' d. 

The  false  light  of  reason  had  misled  the  conscience  of  the 
eighteenth  century  into  an  unverified  acceptance  of  an 
ideal  order  of  things.  '  Get  order '  was  the  text  of 
Pope's  gospel ;  for  '  whatever  is,  is  right '  ;  and  to  the 
decorous  passion  for  order  he  offered  a  willing  sacrifice 
of  the  allurements  of  the  unknown.  Words  lost  their 
edging  of  mystery,  and  thought  its  province  of  the 
imagination.  But  in  the  new  age,  the  senses  rebelled. 
Crabbe's  witnesses  proffered  their  evidence ;  Burns's 
daisy  sighed  to  God  ;  the  white  radiance  of  Blake 
melted  our  substances  to  shadows.  The  stoical  sur- 
render broke  down  ;  no  true  man  could  shut  his  eyes 
and  live.  The  French  '  sensational '  Revolution  inter- 
vened in  the  social  sphere  ;  and,  already,  French  and 
English  writers — Henry  Mackenzie,  for  example — were 
permitting  their  characters  a  free  exhibition  of  emotion, 
chiefly,  it  must  be  added,  by  way  of  weeping.  The 
restored  evidence  of  the  senses,  so  long  languishing  in 
disrepute,  revealed,  through  the  poet's  insight,  a 
burden  of  a  mystery,  where  reason  had  imposed  its 
terms  of  finite  peace  and  comprehension.  The  design 
and  pattern  of  the  universe  were  not  so  simple,  after 
all.  Repose  and  complacency  were  disturbed.  The 
compleidties  of  poverty  and  ignorance,  and,  above  all, 


70    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  opportunities  withheld,  could  no  longer  be  neglected 
by  a  generation  faced  by  the  mob — the  mobile,  that 
terrible  type  of  unrest — which,  when  it  speaks,  speaks 
in  blows. 

-So,  the  world  was  '  unintelligible '  once  more.  To 
one,  its  unintelligible  aspects  took  appropriate  shapes 
of  mystery.  This,  in  the  last  resort,  is  the  method  of 
The  Ancient  Mariner,  the  pangs  of  whose  conscience 
were  materialized  in  visible  shapes  of  terror  : 

All  stood  together  on  the  deck 

For  a  chamel-dungeon  fitter : 
All  fixed  on  me  their  stony  eyes 

That  in  the  moon  did  glitter. 

To  another,  the  unintelligible  aspects  are  explored  by 
the  lonely  soul,  divested  more  and  more  completely 
of  the  conditions  of  time  and  place. 

Until,  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame, 
And  even  the  motion,  of  our  human  blood 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul : 
While,  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy. 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things. 

Thus  Coleridge,  thus  Wordsworth,  in  this  volume  ; 
and  we,  conceding  its  premisses,  can  better  appreciate 
now  the  moral  conclusion  to  many  of  the  ballads  which 
it  contained  : 

O  reader  !  had  you  in  your  mind 
Such  stores  as  silent  thought  can  bring, 

O  gentle  reader!  you  would  find 
A  tale  in  everything. 

Simon  Lee. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  71 

0  dearest,  dearest  boy  !  my  heart 
For  better  lore  would  seldom  yearn. 
Could  I  but  teach  the  hundredth  part 
Of  what  from  thee  I  learn. 

Anecdote  for  Fathers. 

If  I  these  thoughts  may  not  prevent, 
If  such  be  of  my  creed  the  plan. 
Have  I  not  reason  to  lament 
What  man  has  made  of  man  ? 

Lines  in  Early  Spring. 

Enough  of  science  and  of  art ; 

Close  up  these  barren  leaves ; 

Come  forth,  and  bring  with  you  a  heart 

That  watches  and  receives. 

The  Tables  Turned. 

For  the  supernatural  effects  which  Coleridge  invoked  The 
so  skilfully  to  heighten  the  Ancient  Mariner's  remorse  Mariner, 
are  satisfied  in  Wordsworth  by  plain  statements  of  ^'^  ^^^^^ 
his  creed.     To  find  a  tale  in  everything,  to  learn  a 
hundredfold  of  what  one  teaches  in  the  relation  of  father 
and  child,   to  perceive  how  the  man-made  universe 
counteracts  the  beneficent  design,  to  watch  and  receive 
impressions  without  the  sophistication  of  science, — 
these  are  the  finger-posts  directing  us  to  the  states 
of  being  and  of  feeling  of  which  the  Ancient  Mariner's 
experience  was  a  single  eloquent  example.     Resolve  the 
complexities  of  social  life  by  considering  natural  design 
was,  briefly,  the  rescript  of  both  reformers.   Wordsworth 
boldly  proclaimed  it,  as  a  first  principle  of  conduct, 

One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 
May  teach  you  more  of  man ;  [ 

Of  moral  evil  and  of  good  '      .^ 

Than  all  the  sages  can ; 


72    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  Coleridge  exemplified  the  '  teaching  '  by  depicting 
nature's  revenge  on  a  man  who  had  offended  against 
the  '  good  '. 

But  it  is  in  Wordsworth's  Peter  Bell,  which,  though 
first  published  in  1819,  was  written  as  early  as  1798, 
and  not  in  any  of  his  poems  included  in  Lyrical  Ballads, 
that  we  discover  the  true  pendent  to  The  Ancient 
Mariner  of  Coleridge.  Peter  is  an  itinerant  potter, 
whose  hardware  is  carried  by  asses  from  one  village 
to  another.  His  vocation  might  have  subdued  him 
to  the  influences  of  nature  in  her  changing  scenes 
and  seasons,  but,  though  he  dwelt  in  her  presence  night 

and  day. 

Nature  ne'er  could  find  the  way 
Into  the  heart  of  Peter  Bell  .  ,  . 
A  primrose  by  a  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him. 
And  it  was  nothing  more. 

In  brief,  he  was  as  insensible  to  nature's  clamorous 
and  multiple  appeal  as  the  Ancient  Mariner  had  proved 
himself  when  he  slew  the  auspicious  bird  which  typified 
nature's  hospitality. 

The  soft  blue  sky  did  never  melt 
Into  his  heart, — he  never  felt 
The  witchery  of  the  soft  blue  sky. 

So  nature,  seeming  supernatural,  wrought  a  miracle 
by  the  exercise  of  her  powers.  She  used  the  simplest 
means,  not  requiring  the  elaborate  machinery  of  the 
phantom-ship  and  the  risen  dead,  Peter  was  be- 
labouring an  ass  to  death,  and  his  cruel  mood  rejoiced 
to  hear  it  cry  : 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  73 

But  in  the  echo  of  the  rocks 

Was  something  Peter  did  not  like  .  .  . 

What  is  there  now  in  Peter's  heart  ? 

Or  whence  the  might  of  this  strange  sound  ? 

The  moon  imeasy  look'd  and  dimmer, 

The  broad  blue  heavens  appeared  to  glimmer 

And  the  rocks  stagger'd  all  around. 

Here,  then,  is  nature  intervening,  and  we  need  not 
follow  the  exhibition  of  her  agency  of  conversion, 
save  to  note  that  between  Peter's  fear  of  '  ugly  witch- 
craft,' in  the  scene  which  his  own  crime  had  made 
mysterious,  and  the  Mariner's  similar  sensitiveness 
to  the  images  of  conscious  guilt,  the  difference  was  in 
degree,  not  in  kind.  Coleridge  was  perhaps  better 
advised  in  seeking  a  mise-en-scene  more  remote  from 
common  humanity,  but  Wordsworth's  potter  and 
his  ass,  drawn  from  the  world  that  lay  about  him  to 
exemplify  '  nature's  plan  '  working  universally  through 
her  domain,  and  marred  by  '  what  man  makes  of  man  ', 
are  essential  to  the  statement  of  his  faith,  and  are 
equally  characteristic  of  the  intention  of  both  poets 
as  displayed  in  their  critical  writings. 


m. 

To  the  later  Coleridge  we  shall  return  in  the  section  Other 
deahng    with    prose    criticism.     Here,    in    connection  colerid°e 
with  his  poetry,  we  may  briefly  refer  to  the  mystic  ^^^" 
loveliness  of  his  best  verse — there  is  not  much  of  it — , 
which   strikes    through    the    clinging   integuments   of 


ge: 


74    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

circumstance  and  matter  to  the  hearts  and  passions  of 
men.  Sometimes  he  shows  his  method  in  the  making  : 
a  ruined  tower,  and  an  evening  twilight,  a  statue  of  a 
knight  in  armour,  and  '  an  old  rude  song,  that  suited 
well  that  ruin  wild  and  hoary ',  are  the  sought-out 
ingredients  of  a  ballad  which  opens,  as  it  were,  on  the 
top  note  of  poetic  adoration  : 

All  thoughts,  aU  passions,  all  delights. 
Whatever  stirs  this  mortal  frame. 
All  are  but  ministers  of  love. 
And  feed  his  sacred  flame, 

and  which  closes,  when  the  song  has  been  sirng,  and 

the    moving    narrative    related,    on  the   note    of    a 

lover's  triumph  : 

I  calmed  her  fears,  and  she  was  calm, 
And  told  her  love  T\'ith  virgin  pride ; 
And  so  I  won  my  Genevifeve, 
My  bright  and  beauteous  Bride. 

At  other  times,  as  in  the  ode  to  Dejection,  in  Chris- 
tabel,  and  pre-eminently  in  Kubla  Khan,  we  are 
initiated  directly  into  the  efEect  which  the  cultivation 
of  the  means  produces.  What  can  be  more  intangible 
or  indefinable  than  the  feelings  of  which  Kubla  Khan 
is  the  grand  and  the  perfect  expression  ?  The  function 
of  genius  is  creative,  and  here  is  created  for  men  a  new 
mode  of  interpretation.  Language,  the  most  plastic 
of  all  modes,  had  not  availed  hitherto  to  express  the 
remoter  sense  of  beauty,  the  haunting  under-note  of 
music,  which  is  revealed,  not  at  first,  nor  directly,  to 
the  sensitive  listener  or  seer.  To  him,  the  upper  mean- 
ing of  phenomena,  so  far  from  exhausting  their  content, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  75 

is  merely  delusive  and  retarding.  He  might  imitate 
what  he  saw,  and  seek  its  meaning  in  its  features. 
He  might  select  his  material,  rejecting  what  seemed  to 
him  accidental,  and  retaining  what  seemed  to  him 
essential,  among  the  images  presented  to  his  conscious- 
ness ;  re-combining  them,  accordingly,  to  an  artistic 
design.  But  these  poets  of  a  passionate  insight  sought 
a  truth  even  more  remote  than  the  truths  of  sense- 
perception  and  of  art-perception.  They  drew — or 
tried  to  draw — from  the  spectacle  its  purest  flame  of 
vital  being ;  the  last,  unconquerable  essence  which 
the  senses  cannot  perceive  and  the  artist  cannot  repre- 
sent. Imagination  could  essay  no  higher  flight,  and, 
though  it  used  language  as  its  medium — no  other 
medium  was  available — ,  the  language  was  so  liquid 
and  wordless  as  almost  to  rank  as  vocal  thought. 
William  Blake,  as  we  saw,  had  this  power  of  closing 
his  ears  and  his  eyes,  and  of  evoking  from  his  conscious- 
ness of  true  being  single  images  of  reality,  such  as  the 
type  of  '  infant  joy  '.  The  effect  of  Coleridge  in  a  few 
poems  was  even  better  sustained,  and  in  Kuhla  Khan, 
if  we  yield,  first,  our  senses,  then  our  mind,  to  its  agency, 
we  become  conscious  of  the  poet's  interpretation  of 
feelings  so  deep  and  so  remote,  though  latent  in  phe- 
nomena, that  we  hardly  suspected  their  presence,  and 
hardly  acknowledge  them  when  represented.  Yet  the 
more  we  train  ourselves  in  this  perception,  the  more 
joyful  and  wonderful  life  becomes,  and  the  better  we 
are  able  to  appreciate  the  revelation  of  the  poets  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 


76    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Words-  This    faculty    of    appreciation    cannot    be    taught, 

method  of  Either  we  share,  or  we  miss,  the  meaning  beyond  the 
interpre-    -^^ords  which  resides  in  such  hints  at  expression  as  the 

tation.  ^ 

following  phrase  conveys  : 

And  'mid  this  tumult  Kubla  heard  from  fax 
Ancestral  voices  prophesying  war. 

If  we  seize  it,  we  are  freemen  of  poetry,  privy  to  truths 
unexpressed,  and  inexpressible  in  any  other  mode. 
But  its  enjoyment  is  really  an  initiation,  and  it  rests,  in 
the  last  resort,  with  the  reader  himself  to  submit  to 
this  force  of  creative  genius.  Missing  it,  he  misses  the 
chief  part  of  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
of  which  the  supreme  merit  resides  in  its  growing 
ability  to  render  the  evidence  of  the  unseen  to  the 
seen,  not  along  the  old  lines  of  the  theological 
sanction  but  along  the  new  path  of  psychological 
inquiry. 

Conviction  gathers  with  the  perfecting  of  the  method. 
From  its  early  vagueness  and  conjecture  it  increases 
in  definiteness  and  substance,  till  it  suggests  to  the 
reason  of  man,  enlarged  to  the  capacity  of  his  imagina- 
tion, a  new  sanction  of  conduct,  more  comprehensive 
in  its  sympathy  and  more  binding  in  its  obligation, 
inasmuch  as  its  justice  and  its  beauty  are  founded 
impregnably  on  truth.  Here,  in  1798,  let  us  seize  the 
magic  of  that  phrase  in  Kubla  Khan,  which,  though 
made  out  of  words,  transcends  them,  as  a  cathedral 
transcends  its  stones,  and  we  shall  be  on  the  road  to 
acquiring  the  poet's  faculty  of  supersensible  expression. 
It   is   comparable,   in    its    own   period,   with   certain 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  77 

passages  from  Wordsworth's  shorter  poems — with  the 
vanishing  greeting  in  Stepping  Westward, 

'Twas  a  sound 
Of  something  without  place  or  bound ; 
And  seemed  to  give  me  spiritual  right 
To  travel  through  that  region  bright ; 

with  '  Lucy  ',  leaning  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round. 
And  beauty  bom  of  murmuring  sound 
Shall  pass  into  her  face, 

(where  nature's  agency  in  Peter  Bell  and  The  Ancient 

Mariner  is   transfused   by  the    lyrical    perception   of 

identity  in  diversity) ;   with  the  song  of  The  Solitary 

Reaper, 

WiU  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings — 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
From  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things. 
And  battles  long  ago, 

a  type  of  expression  fashioned  by  the  same  cunning  of 
interpretative  art  as  the  '  ancestral  voices  prophesying 
war ',  and  drawing  out  of  the  significance  of  words  an 
equally  distant  meaning  ;  with  the  compensation — 
transfiguring  human  judgment — of  A  Poet's  Epitaph, 

The  outward  shows  of  sky,  and  earth. 
Of  hill  and  valley  he  has  viewed ; 

And  impulses  of  deeper  birth 
Have  come  to  him  in  soUtude. 

In  common  things  which  round  us  lie 
Some  random  truths  he  can  impart, — 

The  harvest  of  a  quiet  eye 
That  broods  and  sleeps  on  its  own  heart 


78    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

— an  apology,  or,  rather,  a  vindication,  whicli  recalls 
a  hundred  passages  in  Wordsworth,  whether  from 
Expostulation  and  Reply,  contained  in  Lyrical  Ballads  : 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress ; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness ; 

or  from  The  Prelude,  book  xiii : 

The  promise  of  the  present  time  retired 
Into  its  true  proportion ;  sanguine  schemes. 
Ambitious  projects,  pleased  me  less ;  I  sought 
For  present  good  in  life's  familiar  face. 
And  built  thereon  my  hopes  of  good  to  come ; 

or  from  the  great  Ode :  Intimations  of  Immortality  from 
Recollections  of  Early  Childhood,  the  corner-stone  of  the 
Wordsworthian  '  Gothic  Church  '  : 

Thanks  to  the  human  heart  by  which  we  live. 
Thanks  to  its  tenderness,  its  joys,  and  fears, 
To  me  the  meanest  flower  which  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears. — 

The  mystical  method  of  poetry,  employing  the  force 
of  natural  magic,  could  go  no  further  in  this  age  ;  and  if 
criticism  object  that  such  '  random  truths '  require  a 
synthesis,  before  faith  can  apply  them  to  experience, 
we  may  reply  with  the  late  Professor  Masson,  who, 
writing  in  1860  on  Recent  British  Philosophy,  deplored 
the  '  loss  and  imbecility '  of  excluding  Wordsworth 
from  that  survey. 

iv. 

His  later     There  is  little  to  be  added  to  this  record.     Quotation 
w"  "»g8.  migiit  only  end  with  Wordsworth's  works,  and  these, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  79 

in  the  long  life  vouchsafed  to  him  (1770-1850),  extended 
to  about  eighty  thousand  lines.  His  finest  poems  were 
written  in  his  second  period,  from  Lyrical  Ballads 
to  The  Excursion,  1798-1814,  His  genius  seemed  to 
harden  as  he  grew  older,  and  his  gaze  to  fix  itself  more 
firmly  on  the  concrete  symbols  of  the  realities  which 
he  had  sought  in  his  more  impassioned  years.  His 
faculty  was  not  less  spiritual,  but  he  relaxed  to  some 
extent  his  hold  on  the  spirit-essence  immanent  in 
material  forms.  Thus,  sonnet-sequences  on  the  River 
Duddon  and  on  ecclesiastical  history  occupied  him  in 
1820  and  1822  ;  memorials  of  tours  began  to  multiply, 
and,  in  1835,  he  finally  completed,  with  additions, 
his  prose  Guide  to  the  Lake  District.  In  1847  he  wrote 
the  '  Ode  '  on  the  installation  of  the  Prince  Consort  as 
Chancellor  of  Cambridge  University — his  only  public 
performance  in  virtue  of  his  office  as  Poet-Laureate, 
which  he  accepted  on  Southey's  death  in  1843  and 
bequeathed  to  Alfred  Tennyson  in  1850. 

The  true,  the  excellent  Wordsworth  was  the  poet  of  the 
earlier  years  and  of  the '  indirect  language  ',  as  it  is  called. 
He  owed  something  to  the  work  of  his  predecessors, 
Collins  and  Gray  ;  but  the  fitful  glimpses  of  blue,  re- 
vealed up  and  down  their  poems,  broaden  and  deepen  at 
last  to  the  greater  poet's  enthusiastic  vision,  till  the 
whole  heaven  is  opened  to  his  faithful  and  patient 
gaze,  and  earth  is  brighter  in  its  light.  He  created  a 
new  mode  of  interpretation,  applying  the  transcendental 
method  to  the  commonplaces  of  life  and  experience. 
He   brought  a  larger   tract  of   the  unknown   within 


8o    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  compass  of  human  understanding.  The  fringe  of 
darkness  receded.  Thoughts  and  feelings,  neglected  or 
ignored,  were  irradiated  and  liberated.  Joy,  like  the 
light  of  Genesis,  was  spread  upon  the  face  of  the  deep, — 
joy,  reasoned  and  functional,  justifying  God  to  man  : 

I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  Ught  of  setting  suns. 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  Mind  of  Man, 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought. 
And  rolls  through  all  things. 

Moreover,  he  found  and  perfected  what  he  terms 
'  the  language  of  the  sense ',  the  expression  which  reaches 
out  beyond  the  meaning  of  its  words  into  the  region 
of  suggestion  and  association  and  surprises  us  by  its 
familiar  strangeness.  A  French  writer  of  this  age, 
Joseph  Joubert  (1754-1824),  has  left  on  record  his 
difficulty  in  enduing  ethereal  ideas  with  corporeal 
language.  '  I  cannot  build  a  house  for  my  ideas  ', 
he  says.  '  The  true  science  of  metaphysics  consists 
not  in  rendering  abstract  that  which  is  sensible,  but  in 
rendering  sensible  that  which  is  abstract ;  apparent, 
that  which  is  hidden  ;  imaginable,  if  so  may  be,  that 
which  is  only  intelligible ;  and  intelligible,  finally, 
that  which  an  ordinary  attention  fails  to  seize  '.  It  is 
for  the  sake  of  this  supreme  appeal  from  darkness  to 
light,  from  appearance  to  reality,  from  the  inductive 
to  the  imaginative  reason,  that  men  go  back  to  Words- 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  8i 

worth  ;  for  none  save  him,  or,  rather,  none  before  him, 
had  solved  this  difl&culty  of  language,  and  reached,  in 
literature,  the  goal  of  metaphysics. 

One  word  must  be  added  in  conclusion.     There  were  Other 

Poets 
problems  which  Wordsworth  left  untouched,  problems 

of  rehgion,  of  industry,  socialism,  democracy,  and  so 
forth.  To  these,  and  to  those  who  dealt  with  them, 
other  chapters  will  refer.  But  this  section  will  not  have 
been  too  long  if  it  succeed  in  initiating  readers — no 
lower  aim  is  adequate — into  the  poetic  method  of 
Wordsworth.  His  resources  were  increased  during  the 
century  by  conclusions  from  other  spheres  of  knowledge, 
but  already  in  1798  he  had  unlocked  secrets  of  nature 
hardly  guessed  -  at  hitherto.  He  surpassed  all  his 
contemporaries  in  what,  for  want  of  a  better  term, 
may  clumsily  be  called  intuitional  constructiveness. 
His  greatness  needs  no  foil,  but  it  is  interesting  to  com- 
pare his  work  with  that  of  Samuel  Rogers,  or  Robert 
Southey,  or  Thomas  Campbell,  or  Thomas  Moore,  all 
of  whom  likewise  lived  through  the  French  Revolution 
into  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria. 

Southey  (1774-1843),  who  was  Coleridge's  brother- 
in-law,  formed  a  third  with  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
in  many  of  their  conclaves,  especially  in  the  earlier 
period,  and  settled  with  them  in  the  Lake  District. 
Surviving  the  idealism  of  his  youth,  he  accepted  a 
pension  from  the  Crown,  and  declined  the  honour  of 
a  baronetcy.  His  chief  poems  were  romantic  and 
adventurous,  in  the  more  obvious  sense,  and  later  in 
6 


S2  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

life  he  became  a  frequent  contributor  to  The  Quarterly 
and  an  industrious  compiler  of  biographies  and  his- 
tories. Rogers  (1763-1855)  belonged  by  taste  to  an 
earlier  generation,  and  his  Pleasures  of  Memory  (1792) 
need  not  detain  us  here.  He  was  a  banker  by  trade, 
and  a  kindly  host  in  middle  life  to  younger  men.  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope  by  Campbell  (1777-1844)  was  composed 
in  a  similar  vein,  though  Campbell,  who  is  buried 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  has  other  titles  to  esteem, 
both  as  a  Hterary  man  by  his  Specimens  of  the  British 
Poets  (1819)  and  in  public  life  as  an  advocate  for  the 
establishment  of  the  University  of  London.  Moore 
(1779-1852),  the  youngest  of  the  group,  was  a  kind 
of  satellite  to  Byron's  sun,  and  may  more  fitly  be 
considered  in  connection  with  the  trio,  Byron,  Shelley, 
and  Keats,  who,  unUke  the  poets  of  the  first  period, 
were  joined  by  the  common  fate  of  a  short  life.  Not 
one  of  the  elder  four  had  the  strength  of  purpose,  the 
tenacious  idealism,  of  Wordsworth,  who  rose  from  the 
slough  of  despond  and  the  disillusion  of  the  hopes  of 
the  revolutionaries  to  the  faith  of  a  higher  revelation, 
founded  on  nature,  not  on  man.  To  him  alone  in  his 
age,  and  only  to  one  other  after  him,  may  his  own  words 
be  applied  (from  the  Fourth  Book  of  The  Excursion) : 
he  was  one, 

In  whom  persuasion  and  belief 
Had  ripened  into  faith,  and  faith  become 
A  passionate  intuition ;  whence  the  soul, 
Though  bound  to  earth  by  ties  of  pity  and  love, 
From  all  injurious  servitude  was  free. 


§6.  ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS. 


IN  passing  from  the  poets  to  the  critics,  the  passage 
is  assisted  by  two  facts,  first,  that  several  writers 
filled  both  parts,  and,  secondly,  that,  without  set 
purpose,  they  worked  towards  common  ends. 

Thus  Coleridge,  as  we  saw,  wrote  his  own  literary  Criticism 
biography  as  well  as  The  Ancient  Mariner,  Christahel  creation. 
and  Kubla  Khan.  Wordsworth  defended  in  his  prefaces 
the  principles  which  he  displayed  in  his  poems. 
Southey,  Campbell  and  others  wrote  in  prose  as  well 
as  verse  ;  and,  generally,  we  may  say  that  criticism 
and  creation  went  together  in  this  age.  Indeed,  looking 
a  little  deeper,  we  may  say  that  no  strict  boundary- 
line  was  drawn  between  the  critics  and  the  poets. 
They  glided  into  one  another.  Shelley  wrote  a  Defence 
of  Poesy  as  well  as  immortal  poems.  Landor  and 
Lamb ,  the  critics ,  were  p oets  at  the  same  time.  Matthew 
Arnold's  definition  helps  us  :  if  poetry  is,  in  a  sense, 
'  a  criticism  of  life  ',  it  is  only  the  conditions  which  are 
varied  to  make  a  critic  or  a  poet.  This  conclusion,  if 
tenable,  is  important,  for,  though  the  art  of  criticism 
at  that  time  was  neither  systematic  nor  methodical, 

it  should  exhibit,  if  our  proposition  is  correct,  a  creative 

83 


84    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

force  of  its  own,  in  the  sense  of  a  kind  of  reinforcement 
of  the  purely  literary  products.  Criticism  of  this  kind, 
which  is  to  be  distinguished  as  sharply  as  possible 
from  the  so-called  critical  writing  which  passes  current 
to-day,  is  itself  pure  literature  of  a  high  order.  By 
applying  first  principles  to  appreciation,  it  increases 
truth  as  effectively  as  direct  nature-interpretation. 
The  German  example  may  be  quoted  in  this  context,  and 

of  Faust,  it  touched  EngUsh  practice  towards  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century  at  more  than  one  point.  Goethe 
(1749-1832),  for  instance,  who  was  poet,  critic  and 
philosopher,  illustrated  throughout  his  useful  and 
beautiful  career  the  fusion  of  philosophy  in  poetry,  and 
of  criticism  in  creation,  which  marked,  in  a  less  degree, 
the  work  of  some  English  writers  ;  and  the  names  of 
Lessing  (1729-1781),  Schlegel  (1767-1845),  Tieck  (1773- 
1853)  and  Schelling  (1775-1854)  occur  in  the  same  con- 
nection. Goethe's  Faust,  perhaps  the  most  remarkable 
of  all  the  writings  of  the  age,  may  be  described  as  a 
world-poem.  Faust,  tempted  of  the  devil,  yearned 
to  take  upon  his  shoulders  the  weal  and  woe  of  all 
mankind,  '  and  so  to  enlarge  his  own  capacity  to  the 
capacity  of  all  conscious  being '.  The  scheme  of  the 
poem,  or  drama,  involves  a  criticism  of  life,  in  a  sense 
even  more  complete  than  the  Wordsworthian  criticism 
of  the  life  which  he  surveyed.  Wordsworth  shrank, 
after  one  brief  experience  in  revolutionary  France,  from 
contact  with  life  in  its  fullest  aspects.  His  theme, 
'  but  little  heard  of  among  men ',  was  to  be,  as  he 
stated   in   a   famous   passage,    '  how   exquisitely   the 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  85 

external  World  is  fitted  to  the  Mind  '  ;  and,  in  order 
to  display  this  reconcilement,  he  was  aware  that  he 
would  have  to  linger,  as  in  France,  among  '  ill  sights  of 
madding  passion  mutually  inflamed  ',  that  he  would 
hear  '  humanity  in  fields  and  groves  pipe  solitary 
anguish  ',  and  that  he  would  hang 

Brooding  above  the  fierce  confederate  storm 
Of  sorrow,  barricadoed  evermore 
Within  the  walls  of  cities. 

Unfortunately,  of  this  portion  of  his  theme  the  magni- 
ficent phrase  just  cited  is  all  that  he  achieved.  The 
Recluse,  as  we  saw,  was  never  finished.  One  part  only, 
The  Excursion,  is  complete,  and  it  rarely  quits  the 
countryside.  How  the  same  reconcilement  between 
experience  and  design  would  have  been  sought  '  within 
the  walls  of  cities  ',  how  the  World  and  the  Mind  would 
have  been  shown  cooperating  in  exquisite  fitness 
under  the  conditions  of  '  confederate  storm  '  is,  to-day, 
conjectural  only.  English  literature  is  the  poorer  in  con- 
sequence, and  it  refers  us  forward  to  Browning,  Tenny- 
son, and  George  Meredith,  in  their  several  capacities, 
for  the  signs  of  the  further  harmony.  But  Goethe  did 
not  shrink  from  this  trial  of  faith.  The  '  external 
world '  of  Faust's  experience  was  fitted  to  the  '  in- 
dividual mind  ',  and  the  sorrows  which  he  would  have 
taken  to  his  bosom  included  those  of  humanity  in 
towns.  There  was  a  fusion  of  the  individual  and  the 
universal  in  Goethe's  sane  and  leisurely  outlook,  which 
enlarged  his  criticism  of  lifeTbeyond  the  bounds  of 
English  writers  of  the  same  period. 


86    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Charles      But  if  the  compass  of  the  English  survey  was  not 

Lamb.  .  ,  fz-^ii- 

as  immense  as  that  of  Goethe,  his  example  helps 
us  to  understand  how  the  contribution  of  literature 
to  thought — thought  opening  territories  and  pushing 
back  the  frontiers  of  the  unknown— was  marked  by  a 
singleness  of  aim  beneath  its  diversities  of  style  ;  how, 
if  Faust  is  drama  to  the  actors,  and  opera  to  the 
musicians,  and  experience  to  the  critics,  so  Lamb, 
De  Quincey  and  Landor,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth  and 
Scott,  and,  according  to  their  vision,  Southey,  Hazlitt 
and  Leigh  Hunt  are  all  tributary  to  one  stream,  and 
that  their  work,  whether  as  poetry  or  criticism,  is  re- 
sumed in  the  larger  term  of  philosophy — the  quest  of 
truth.  Thus  Charles  Lamb  (1775-1834),  in  his  valour 
and  his  tenderness  the  bravest  and  the  brightest  of 
the  men  of  genius  who  adorned  the  early  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  as  truly  a  creative  force  in  his 
essays,  his  selections,  and  his  notes,  as  Wordsworth 
in  his  poems  or  prefaces.  The  reviewers  and  critics 
of  to-day  who  form  so  numerous  a  tribe  cannot  claim 
this  distinction.  They  are  commentators,  not  creators, 
and  it  is  only  occasionally  that  a  Swinburne  will  de- 
scend from  the  mountain  to  the  plain,  and,  winging 
his  way  back,  will  raise  criticism  again  to  the  level  of 
pure  literature.  But  such  a  book,  for  instance,  as. 
Lamb's  Specimens  of  English  Dramatic  Writers  who 
lived  aboitt  the  Time  of  Shakespeare  (1808),  though  it 
consist  merely  of  extracts  with  a  few  footnotes,  and  his 
Tales  from  Shakespeare,  written  in  conjunction  with 
hia  sister,  mark  an  epoch  in  constructive    criticism. 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  87 

Not  merely  did  they  recall  a  forgetful  generation  to  the 
beauty  of  older  letters — most  elegant  extracts  may  do 
that —  :  but  they  revealed  this  beauty  in  new  aspects, 
tkus  effecting  for  art  what  art  itself  effects  for  nature, 
a  new  medium  of  interpretation.  The  criticism  itself 
becomes  an  art,  without  which  the  material  on  which 
it  works  would  fall  short  of  the  fulness  of  its  powers. 
Lamb's  notes  to  the  Specimens  are  restrained  by  a  rare 
parcimony ;  he  was  content  that  his  sympathy  with 
the  Elizabethans  should  communicate  itself  through 
their  own  works.  But  take,  for  example,  such  a  foot- 
note as  the  following,  and  we  see  how  fresh  was  the 
point  of  view,  and  how  inspiring  was  the  refreshment 
which  it  offered  : 

It  requires  a  study  equivalent  to  the  learning  of  a 
new  language  to  understand  their  meaning,  when  they 
speak.  .  .  .  It  is  as  if  a  being  of  pure  intellect  should 
take  upon  himself  to  express  the  emotions  of  our 
sensitive  nature.  There  would  be  all  knowledge,  but 
sympathetic  expression  would  be  wanting. 

This  is  a  poet's  commentary  on  poetry,  and  a 
similarly  penetrating  note — one  of  many  among  the 
few — is  this  upon  William  Rowley  : 

The  old  play-writers  are  distinguished  by  an  honest 
boldness  of  exhibition  ;  they  show  everything  without 
being  ashamed.  If  a  reverse  in  fortune  be  the  thing 
to  be  personified,  they  fairly  bring  us  to  the  prison-grate 
and  the  alms-basket.  A  poor  man  on  our  stage  is  always 
a  gentleman  ;  he  may  be  known  by  a  peculiar  neatness 


88    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  apparel,  and  by  wearing  black.  Our  delicacy, 
in  fact,  forbids  the  dramatizing  of  distress  at  all.  It 
is  never  shown  in  its  essential  properties  ;  it  appears 
but  as  the  adjunct  to  some  virtue,  as  something  which 
is  to  be  relieved,  from  the  approbation  of  which  relief 
the  spectators  are  to  derive  a  certain  soothing  of  self- 
referred  satisfaction.  We  turn  away  from  the  real 
essences  of  things  to  hunt  after  their  relative  shadows, 
moral  duties  ;  whereas,  if  the  truth  of  things  were 
fairly  represented,  the  relative  duties  might  be  safely 
trusted  to  themselves,  and  moral  philosophy  lose  the 
name  of  a  science. 

We  have  here  a  hint  of  the  contention  which  Lamb 
elaborated  elsewhere  that  many  of  the  best  efiects  of 
Shakespeare  are  lost  on  the  stage.  Paradoxically  put, 
this  was  equivalent  to  saying  that  Shakespeare  is  not 
a  good  acting  playwright, — a  paradox  which  no  one 
would  support.  But  the  paradoxes  of  a  critic  as  great 
as  Lamb  are  aflame  with  the  insight  of  genius,  and  he 
brought  readers  to  see  that  conventional  judgments 
may  prove  even  wilder  and  more  fallacious  than  the 
new  and  surprising  point  of  view.  He  dared  to  be 
original  in  criticism,  and  to  be  a  poet  with  his  poets  ; 
in  the  result,  he  added  considerably  to  the  expressive- 
ness of  poetry.  One  of  the  finest  of  his  essays  is  that 
which  appeared  in  The  New  Monthly  Magazine  (1826), 
as  one  of  a  series  of  papers  refuting  popular  fallacies, 
under  the  heading  '  That  Great  Wit  is  allied  to  Madness  ', 
now  included  in  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia  as  '  The  Sanity 
of  True  Genius '.  He  urges — and  the  argument  has 
never  been  more  timely  since  that  date  than  to-day — 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  89 

that  the  cause  for  the  disrepute  of  poetry  as  '  a  state 
of  dreaminess  and  fever '  is  to  be  found  in  the  false 
analogy  between  that  common  experience  of  men  and 
the  '  condition  of  exaltation,  to  which  they  have  no 
parallel  in  their  own  experience '.  Caliban  and  the 
witches,  he  tells  us,  drawing,  as  so  often,  his  illustra- 
tion from  Shakespeare,  '  are  as  true  to  the  laws  of 
their  own  nature  as  Othello,  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  '. 
And  here  is  the  difference  between  the  great  and 
the  little  wits  :  '  If  the  latter  wander  ever  so  little 
from  nature  or  actual  existence,  they  lose  them- 
selves and  their  readers.  Their  phantoms  are  lawless ; 
their  visions  nightmares.  .  .  .  For  the  supernatural, 
or  something  super-added  to  what  we  know  of  nature, 
they  give  you  the  plainly  non-natural',  and  Lamb 
appeals  to  the  reader  of  '  Lane's  novels  '  of  that  day — 
the  Family  Herald  supplements  of  our  own — '  whether 
he  has  not  found  his  brain  more  "  betossed  ",  his  memory 
more  puzzled,  his  sense  of  when  and  where  more  con- 
founded, among  the  improbable  events,  the  incoherent 
incidents,  the  inconsistent  characters,  or  no  characters, 
of  some  third-rate  love  intrigue,  a  more  bewildering 
dreaminess  induced  upon  him,  than  he  has  felt  wander- 
ing over  all  the  fairy  grounds  of  Spenser '.  This  is 
creative  criticism  at  its  highest,  the  criticism  by 
which  all  creators  would  wish  to  have  their  work 
judged. 

Lamb's  writings  were  by  no  means  confined  to  books 
and  the  makers  of  books.  The  Essays  of  Elia  discuss 
•Roast    Pig'    and    'Poor    Relations',    'Old    China' 


go  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  '  The  Old  Margate  Hoy ' ;  and  for  their  complete 
understanding  some  acquaintance  is  required  with 
the  facts  of  his  hfe.  It  is  a  story  of  strength  in  weak- 
ness, that  tiny  minage  h  deux  of  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb,  and  all  the  tragedy  that  was  hidden,  and  all 
the  comedy  that  was  revealed.  How  often  they 
changed  their  lodging,  and  how  often  Charles  was 
alone,  and  how  sad,  and  with  what  deepening  sadness, 
the  cause  of  this  and  of  the  rest ;  and  the  brother's 
devotion  to  the  sister,  and  her  sustaining  love  for 
him,  piercing  even  the  shadows  of  the  calamity 
which  wrecked  her  life ;  and  the  love-episode,  so 
like  Lamb  in  its  confidences  and  reticences ;  and 
the  poverty,  consecrated  by  cheerfulness,  and  the 
drollery,  the  wit,  and  the  tears — London,  which  he 
found  so  companionable,  has  never  nurtured  a  son 
who  moves  us  more  wholly  to  admiration  and  to 
pity. 

It  is  the  human  touch  which  irradiates  much  of  the 
self-revealing  style  of  Elia  in  his  Essays,  expanding 
the  personal  note  to  sentiments  of  universal  import ; 
and,  taking  all  into  account,  it  is  hard  to  disagree 
with  those  who  place  such  a  paper  as  '  Dream  Children  ' 
at  the  height  of  imaginative  writing  :  '  I  became  in 
doubt  which  of  them  stood  there  before  me,  or  whose 
that  bright  hair  was  '  ;  and  '  nothing  at  last  but  two 
mournful  features  were  seen  in  the  uttermost  distance, 
which,  without  speech,  impressed  upon  me  the  effects 
of  speech  :  "  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee,  nor  are 
we  children  at  all.    The  children  of  Alice  call  Bartram 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  91 

father  "  ;  and  immediately  awaking  I  found  myself 
quietly  seated  in  my  bachelor  armchair,  with  the 
faithful  Bridget  unchanged  by  my  side '.  There  is 
nothing  like  this  in  English  literature,  nothing  so 
unstudied  in  its  exquisite  perfection,  so  moving  in  its 
grace  and  tenderness.  Lamb  possessed  the  rare  gift 
of  preserving  his  own  personality  under  many  varia- 
tions ;  if  he  dealt  with  an  Addisonian  topic,  he  acquired 
the  Addisonian  tricks  of  language.  He  evinced  a  genius 
for  apt  quotation  which  every  intending  essayist  should 
very  carefully  analyse  and  study.  But,  above  all, 
he  was  true  to  Charles  Lamb,  to  the  shy,  sensitive, 
stuttering,  brave,  stricken,  poor,  gay,  true-hearted 
gentleman  whom  everybody  loved,  and  who,  seeking 
the  best  in  everything,  adorned,  in  a  famous  phrase, 
everything  which  he  touched. 


u. 

Thomas  De  Quincey  (1785-1859),  a  friend  of  Lamb  Thomas 
and  of  the  Coleridge  group,  cherished  a  conscious  aim  in  Quincey. 
literature  more  ambitious  than  Lamb's,  but  achieved, 
in  the  judgment  of  posterity,  less  tangible  and  definite 
results.  He  desired — by  instinct  and  intention — to 
become  the  Wordsworth  of  prose-reform,  or  the  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  combined,  adding  to  Lyrical 
Ballads  a  restoration  in  prose  of  the  traditions  of  passion 
and  ornateness  of  seventeenth-century  writers.  But 
though  we  can  point  to  the  passages,  neither  infrequent 


92    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

nor  uninspired,  in  which  De  Quincey  realized  his  aim, 
on  the  whole  he  compels  us  to  the  conclusion  that  hia 
style  was  too  good  for  his  material.  The  root  of  the 
fault  lay  in  character.  Against  his  jealousy  of 
Coleridge  in  later  life,  and  his  pitiful  balancing  of  their 
drugs,  we  may  set  off,  in  honourable  quittance,  his 
offer,  through  Cottle,  the  publisher,  of  a  sum  of  £500  to 
help  the  struggling  poet  in  his  most  necessitous  days. 
A  part  of  the  gift — £300 — was  accepted  on  Coleridge's 
behalf,  and  literary  history  contains  hardly  a  more 
striking  example  of  an  act  of  unacknowledged  gene- 
rosity performed  by  a  junior  towards  a  senior,  to  whom 
he  was  joined  by  a  similar  experience  of  adversity. 

The  generous  impulse  was  not  unique — De  Quincey 
was  a  man  of  impulses — ,  but  it  does  not  redeem  his 
life,  and,  consequently,  his  writings,  from  the  charge 
of  narcotic  influence.  Opium-eating  is  a  vice  which 
men  of  letters,  as  such,  have  disused  ;  and,  in  De 
Quincey's  case,  at  any  rate,  its  adoption,  and  gradual 
domination,  may  be  traced,  in  the  first  instance,  to 
imperfect  supervision  at  school  and  to  the  stupidity  of 
a  local  doctor.  Still,  neither  Coleridge  nor  De  Quincey 
was  able  wholly  to  withstand  the  moral  deterioration 
which  the  use  of  the  drug  produces.  De  Quincey's 
prose  often  rises  to  truly  impassioned  eloquence.  Far 
more  deliberately  than  Lamb,  he  opposed,  not  merely 
his  fine  scholarship,  but  his  artistic  principles  and 
practice,  to  the  formal  modes  of  the  past  age.  With  a 
better  concentration  of  purpose  he  might  have  effected 
in  prose,  not  the  means  of  reform,  but  the  results,  and 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  93 

in  economics  at  least  might  have  made  a  permanent 
mark.  Actually,  he  fails  in  conviction.  His  Con- 
fessions of  an  English  Opium-Eater  (1822,  revised  1856), 
which  is  the  medley  of  autobiography,  criticism  and 
talk  by  which  he  is  best  known,  is  extremely  interesting 
in  parts,  and  its  value  in  the  development  of  English 
prose — since  all  development  in  literature  is  a  return  to 
and  an  improvement  upon  former  models  :  in  this 
instance,  as  De  Quincey  himself  tells  us,  '  Donne, 
Chillingworth,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Milton,  South, 
Barrow,  a  constellation  of  seven  golden  stars  ' — is  never 
to  be  neglected.  But  page  after  page  occurs  of  forced 
and  ineffective  trifling — stuffed  Lamb,  so  to  speak — 
while  the  edge  of  much  of  the  wit  is  feminine  and 
spiteful.  De  Quincey  could  write  of  London,  '  sole, 
dark,  infinite,  brooding  over  the  whole  capacities  of 
my  heart '  ;  he  could  transform  metaphysics  to  litera- 
ture :  '  if  in  this  world  there  is  one  misery  having  no 
relief,  it  is  the  pressure  on  the  heart  from  the  Incom- 
municable. And,  if  another  Sphinx  should  arise  to 
propose  another  enigma  to  man,  saying,  "  What  burden 
is  that  which  only  is  insupportable  by  human  forti- 
tude ?  ",  I  should  answer  at  once,  "It  is  the  burden 
of  the  Incommunicable  "  ' — a  passage  which  explains 
elsewhere  '  the  deep  deep  magnet  of  William  Words- 
worth ' —  ;  but  he  could  publish  without  discrimination 
pages  of  trivial  verboseness  about  the  '  tintinnabulous 
propensities '  of  a  college  porter,  which  relax  the  con- 
ventions of  Gibbon  and  Dr.  Johnson,  but  do  not  add 
to  art. 


94    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 


m. 


John  De  Quincey  properly  belongs  to  the  new  era  of 
journalism,  or  of  the  periodical  press,  which  was  to 
play  80  large  a  part  in  the  history  of  the  next  hundred 
years.  Like  John  Wilson  (1785-1852)  in  the  North— 
they  were  born  in  the  same  year — he  was,  above  all,  a 
feuilletonist,  forerunners  both  of  a  line  which,  closing 
for  our  purposes  with  W.  E.  Henley  (1849-1903),  forms, 
with  the  poets  and  the  novelists,  who  availed  them- 
selves of  the  same  means,  a  triple  chain  of  strength  in 
nineteenth-century  literature.  Wilson  was  the  chief 
contributor,  under  the  pen-name  of  '  Christopher  North,' 
to  Blackwood's  Magazine,  from  1817  till  his  death,  and 
his  association  with  '  Maga '  (as  '  Ebony's '  magazine  is 
still  called)  was  as  close  as  that  of  De  Quincey  with 
The  London  Magazine,  in  which  his  Confessions  first 
appeared.  If  the  Confessions  are  tinged  with  opium, 
Wilson's  Nodes  Ambrosiance  are  drenched  with  strong 
wine.  De  Quincey  himself  has  a  role — a  very  small  one 
though  it  be — in  the  revels  of  this  Round  Table  of  the 
North,  at  which  the  chief  place  was  reserved  for  Wilson's 
idealization  of  James  Hogg  (1770-1836),  a  Scottish 
vernacular  poet,  known  as  '  the  Ettrick  Shepherd '. 
The  eating  and  drinking  bouts  of  the  company  whom 
'  Christopher  North  '  assembled  at  Blackwood's  have 
been  made  famous  by  his  book,  and  the  atmosphere  is 
certainly  more  refreshing,  if  in  places  very  much  more 
primitive,    than   that   of   De   Quincey's   confessional. 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  95 

But,  as  literature,  their  merit  is  equivalent.  The 
Nodes  and  the  Confessions  alike  expand  the  powers 
of  English  prose.  Heroes  in  corduroy  and  fustian, 
heroines  in  deshabille  and  rags — De  Quincey's  Ann, 
for  example,  that  sad-eyed  daughter  of  the  streets,  who, 
failing  to  keep  an  assignation,  won  a  place  in  national 
biography — are  admitted  freely  to  their  pages.  The 
limits  of  decorum  and  convention — of  decorum  con- 
ventionally defined — are  for  ever  overrun.  A  new 
convention  is  established,  as  old  as  the  comedy  of 
human  life,  that  quidquid  agunt  homines  may  be  matter 
for  men's  contemplation. 

The  Shakespearean  spectacle  is  resumed,  and  some- 
thing of.  Shakespeare's  style — of  the  man  whom  the 
style  revealed — is  recalled  from  the  overlying  dust. 
Scott,  for  instance,  had  a  stage  as  crowded  as  Shake- 
speare's and  a  sympathy  almost  as  catholic ;  and 
Wilson,  De  Quincey  and  Lamb,  according  to  their 
tastes  and  capacities,  brought  back  to  a  younger  genera- 
tion the  bolder  and  the  broader  points  of  view.  They 
were  thoroughly  conscious  Elizabethans.  Lamb  re- 
told the  tales  of  Shakespeare,  and  revived  the  dramas 
of  his  age.  Coleridge  lectured  on  Shakespeare  ;  and 
De  Quincey,  constantly  admiring  him,  cultivated  a 
seventeenth-century  style.  It  was  part  of  the  faith 
of  the  times  that  salvation  lay  in  that  revival ;  that  the 
great  and  spacious  days  of  Drake  and  Ralegh  and 
Bacon — all  adventurers  and  explorers  in  territories 
of  action  and  thought — would  foster  the  romantic 
temperament   which   was   so   urgently  desired.     This 


Review 
ers. 


96    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

faith  still  lives  in  A.  C.  Swinburne,  whose  Age  of  Shake- 
speare  (1908)  is  inscribed  to  the  memory  of  Lamb. 
These  early  pioneers  were  scholars  in  no  pedantic 
sense.  They  were  Greeks  rather  than  Grecians,  if 
a  difference  may  be  subsumed  in  the  distinction  ;  the 
very  idea  of  a  magazine  or  miscellany  implies  that 
barriers  are  broken  down  ;  and  they  left  to  the  in- 
heritors of  English  prose  a  more  malleable  and  pliant 
weapon  than  Dr.  Johnson  had  conceived. 
The  It  is  to  these  writers  and  their  like — to  J.  E.  Lockhart 

(1794—1854),  Scott's  biographer,  and  a  Blackwood  and 
a  Quarterly  man  ;  to  Leigh  Hunt  (1784-1851),  the  friend 
of  Keats,  and  the  '  belles-lettrist ',  pre-eminently,  of  his 
times — that  we  trace  the  elasticity  of  modern  prose 
and  the  rise  of  modern  reviews,  rather  than  to  the 
slightly  older  men,  older  in  tradition,  if  not  in  years, 
such  as  William  Gifford  (1756-1826),  Francis  Jeffrey 
(1773-1850),  Lord  Brougham  (1778-1868),  and  Sydney 
Smith  (1771-1845) — Southey's  name  might  be  added — 
who  are  associated  with  the  beginnings  of  the  Quarterly 
and  the  Edinburgh  Reviews.  The  reputation  of  these 
four  founders,  though  their  secrets  of  authorship  were 
well  preserved,  stood  very  high  in  their  own  day,  far 
higher  then  than  now,  when  the  true  light  of  their 
criticism  has  been  somewhat  obscured  by  the  heavy 
clouds  of  their  mistakes.  Their  judgment  was  not  free 
from  prejudice.  They  seldom  fully  shook  off  the  false 
analogy  of  the  law-courts,  that  a  judge  tries  malefactors. 
Literary  criticism  to-day  is  perverted  by  such  contrary 
canons  that  justice,  weary  of  advertisement,  might  sigh 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  97 

for  an  hour  of  Jeffrey  ;  still,  it  is  obvious  enougli  that 
their  mental  attitude  was  '  set ',  and  the  tendency  of 
their  opinions  too  rigid  to  affect  the  main  current  of 
literature.  They  wore  their  learning  too  closely; 
and,  as  the  poets  whom  they  put  right  have  sur- 
vived even  the  memory  of  their  blame,  so  the  fame 
of  the  editors  is  surpassed  by  that  of  some  of  their 
contributors. 

The  growing  tolerance  of  the  age,  its  broader  and  more  Coleridge 
catholic  spirit,  are  manifest  in  the  prose  works  of  Cole-  Hazlitt. 
ridge,  and  in  the  critical  writings  of  Walter  Savage 
Landor  (1775-1864)  and  of  William  Hazlitt  (1778-1830). 
Like  Lamb,  Wilson  and  De  Quincey,  and  many  of  the 
writers  of  these  times,  Coleridge  practised  with  success 
the  lost  art  of  conversation,  for  which,  as  for  the 
newspapers  and  reviews,  favourable  opportunity  was 
afforded  by  better  means  of  communication.  As  a 
leading  Unitarian  preacher,  he  took  a  considerable 
part  in  the  liberal  movement  of  the  Church,  and  his 
influence  in  this  direction  was  as  consistent  and  strong 
as  his  desultory  habits  permitted.  He  assimilated 
German  metaphysics,  which  he  introduced  to  English 
thought  through  his  Aids  to  Reflection  and  other  channels. 
He  attracted  munificent  patrons — Thomas  Wedgwood, 
for  example — ,  and,  where  patrons  failed,  he  would 
quarter  himself  upon  his  friends.  Wordsworth  at 
least  he  repaid  in  overflowing  measure  by  the  pene- 
trating praise  of  his  poetry  in  Biographia  Literaria, 
which  likewise  contains  some  of  his  valuable  criticism 
of  Shakespeare. 
7 


98    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

To  Shakespeare,  again,  William  Hazlitt,  like  Lamb, 
Coleridge  and  others,  devoted  his  keen  and  clear  talents 
of  exposition  and  interpretation.  Hazlitt  was  an 
Edinburgh  reviewer,  a  contributor  to  Leigh  Hunt's 
Examiner — for  which  he  wrote  The  Round  Table,  so 
characteristic  even  in  its  title  of  the  tastes  of  the  age — , 
and  to  other  periodicals,  and  he  is  prominently 
associated  with  the  repaired  allegiance  to  Elizabethan 
standards  and  models.  It  was  their  own  fresh  out- 
look on  life — the  effect,  in  part,  of  social  changes  summed 
up  in  the  French  Revolution — which  drove  critics  in 
this  age  back  to  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries, 
and,  through  them,  back  to  the  Greeks.  Enthusiasm 
and  common  sense — the  last  including  all  human  sensi- 
bilities— returned  Hke  the  sun  at  noonday  ;  a  purer 
and  more  wholesome  atmosphere  restored  the  sanity 
of  humankind.  And  hence  criticism  in  this  age  takes 
on  the  unforgetable  note  of  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  and 
Coleridge,  from  whom  one  example  may  be  selected  : 

Keeping  at  all  times  in  the  high  road  of  life,  Shake- 
speare has  no  innocent  adulteries,  no  interesting  incests, 
no  virtuous  vice  : — he  never  renders  that  amiable 
which  religion  and  reason  alike  teach  us  to  detest.  .  .  . 
Shakespeare's  fathers  are  roused  by  ingratitude,  his 
husbands  stung  by  unfaithfulness  ;  in  him,  in  short, 
the  affections  are  wounded  in  those  points  in  which  all 
may,  nay,  must,  feel.  In  Shakespeare  vice  never 
walks  as  in  twilight :  nothing  is  purposely  out  of  its 
place  ; — he  inverts  not  the  order  of  nature  and  pro- 
priety, ...  he  has  no  benevolent  butchers,  nor  any 
sentimental  rat-catchers. 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  99 

This  is  constructive  criticism  of  the  highest  creative 
kind,  and  it  blows — like  a  wind  from  the  sea — through 
the  clustering  perversities  of  men  too  civil  to  be  true. 


IV. 

More  fortunate  in  his  circumstances  than  some  of  Landor. 
the  writers  already  discussed,  though  not  uniformly 
fortunate  in  moulding  them,  and — partly  by  the  grace 
of  his  eighty-nine  years — more  dehberate  in  his  hterary 
methods,  Walter  Savage  Landor  succeeded  in  associ- 
ating the  reform  of  English  prose  with  writings  more 
composite  than  De  Quincey's  and  more  co-ordinate 
than  Lamb's.  The  charm  of  Lamb  resides  in  the 
occasional  character  of  his  essays,  and  in  the  skill  with 
which  he  imparts  an  efEect  of  improvization  to  the  most 
delicate  works  of  art.  De  Quincey  and,  to  a  large 
extent,  Coleridge,  as  a  critic  and  prose-writer,  permitted 
themselves  a  wide  expatiation.  De  Quincey  especially, 
in  the  Confessions,  helped  to  establish  in  England  a  form 
of  egoistic  literature,  more  recently  differentiated  as 
introspective,  of  which  the  Apologia  pro  vita  Sua 
(1864)  of  John  Henry  Newman,  cardinal,  is  the  most 
eminent  Victorian  example,  though  closer  analogues 
are  found  in  Richard  JefEeries's  Story  of  my  Heart 
(1883)  and  in  some  of  the  essays  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson.  Hazlitt's  Table-talk  and  Wilson's  Noctes 
are  to  be  classed  in  the  same  kind,  at  the  period  of 
its  loosest  manipulation,  and  it  is  a  striking  tendency 


100  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

to  Landor's  finer  sense  of  form  that  he  poured  the 
resources  of  his  scholarship  into  vessels  of  fixed 
capacity.  With  no  less  eloquence  than  his  contem- 
poraries, he  resisted  their  tendency  to  overflow  by 
composing  his  material  to  the  conditions  of  his  style. 
If  Elia  is  identified  with  the  release  of  English  prose 
from  the  pomp  and  ritual  of  the  Latinizers,  and  if  the 
Opium-Eater  decorated  prose  with  Gothic  ornaments 
and  imagery,  Landor's  Imaginary  Conversations  add 
weight,  order,  and  authority  to  the  new  liberties  to  be 
enjoyed, 

Landor's  biography  is  full  of  tales  of  his  ungovernable 
temper  and  obstinate  errors  of  judgment.  Trinity, 
Oxford,  sent  him  down  in  1794,  as  University  College 
sent  down  Shelley  in  181L  He  bought  an  estate  in 
Wales,  and  left  it  under  a  cloud  of  public  odium.  He 
settled  at  Como  for  three  years,  and  lampooned  its 
dignitaries  so  rudely  that  he  had  to  migrate  in  1818. 
He  wandered  from  Pisa  to  Florence,  and  bought  a 
villa  at  Fiesole.  Later,  having  quarrelled  with  his 
wife,  he  settled  again  in  England,  and  lived  at  Bath  for 
twenty  years.  In  1858  he  returned  to  Italy,  the  magnet 
of  many  English  poets,  from  Keats  and  Shelley  in 
Landor's  youth  to  Robert  Browning  in  his  old  age. 
Browning's  care  was  extended  to  him  in  that  period, 
and  he  died  at  Florence  in  1864.  Something  of  the 
defects  of  his  private  character,  which  are  otherwise 
irrelevant  to  his  writing,  may  be  discerned  in  his  style. 
He  is  impatient,  opinionated,  and  entete  in  much  that 
he  says,  while   the  very  severity  of  his  taste  repels 


ESSAYISTS  AND  CRITICS  loi 

many  of  his  readers.  Thus,  at  the  present  day,  it 
is,  perhaps,  rather  for  his  example  as  a  master  of 
English  prose  than  for  the  intrinsic  interest  of  his  work 
that  Landor  is  chiefly  to  be  remembered.  But  these 
Conversations,  at  the  same  time,  with  the  immense  field 
of  topics  which  they  cover — political,  artistic,  literary, 
historical — ,  display  a  wealth  of  knowledge,  sometimes 
misapplied,  but  never  misprized,  and  preserve,  through- 
out their  dramatic  variety,  the  best  classical  traditions 
of  diction,  rhythm  and  arrangement.  They  may  be 
left  unread  in  an  age  of  less  robust  scholarship,  but  the 
formal  beauty  of  their  writing  adds  honour  to  Enghsh 
prose.  And  a  brief  reference  is  due  to  Landor's  verses. 
He  had  not  the  self-abandonment  of  a  great  poet,  but 
his  sense  of  order  and  design  assisted  him  to  achieve  a 
few  masterpieces  of  poetic  style  ;  among  these — and 
with  feeling  superadded — '  Rose  Aylmer ',  a  lyi'iG  in 
eight  lines,  remains  as  an  abiding  possession. 

There  were  minor  writers  in  this  class  :  the  Radical  other 
journalist,  William  Cobbett  (1762-1835),  who  started  ^"*^''^* 
The  Weekly  Register  ;  John  Wilson  Croker  (1780-1857), 
of  The  Quarterly  Review,  politician  and  essajdst,  and 
editor  of  Boswell's  Johnson ;  Isaac  DTsraeli  (1766- 
1848),  another  Quarterly  reviewer,  and  a  diligent 
scholar  in  trifles,  best  known  by  his  Curiosities  of 
Literature,  and  as  the  father  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
and  others  enough  to  supply  in  abundance  the  needs 
of  the  growing  number  of  newspapers  and  reviews. 
It  is  less  unjust  to  pass  these  over  in  favour  of  their 
greater  contemporaries  than  to  omit  to  mention  Henry 


102     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Hallam  (1777-1859),  whose  Constitutional  History  of 
England  has  only  recently  been  superseded,  and  whose 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe  still  has  weight 
as  an  authority.  In  the  same  class  of  talent  without 
genius — unlit  talent,  as  it  were — are  to  be  counted 
William  Mitford  (1744-1827),  historian  of  Greece, 
Thomas  Arnold  (1795-1842),  historian  of  Rome,  and 
George  Finlay  (1799-1875),  the  historian  of  Greece  in 
her  decadence.  Contemporary  with  these  was  George 
Grote  (1794-1871),  a  banker  by  trade  and  a  radical  in 
politics,  who  represented  for  a  time  the  City  of  London 
in  Parliament.  His  History  of  Greece,  despite  its  many 
shortcomings  in  the  light  of  recent  research,  is  still  a 
most  valuable  study,  from  the  democratic  point  of  view, 
of  the  rule  of  the  Athenian  Empire.  Moreover,  it  is  a 
popular  history,  and  to  this  quality,  perhaps,  it  owes  its 
continuing  renown. 

Meanwhile,  the  historians  proper  were  passed  by 
another  kind  of  writers,  who,  alike  in  poetry  and  prose, 
sought  to  revive  the  past,  not  in  its  actual  happenings, 
but  in  its  human  possibilities.  History  itself,  in  its 
order  as  it  happened,  was  not  vivid  enough  for  the 
ardent  curiosity  of  the  age  ;  and,  against  the  back- 
grounds emerging  by  the  patient  labour  of  historians, 
historical  novelists  and  romanticists  began  to  arrange 
their  crowded  scenes. 


§  7.  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

TO  study  original  authorities,  to  weigh  evidence,  to  The 
reject  improbabiHties,  and  to  present  the  con-  ^°™*"°* 
elusions  in  a  sober  and  painstaking  narrative,  did  not  history, 
comprise,  accordingly,  the  whole  duty  of  the  historian. 
A  condition  precedent  of  his  craft  was  the  large  view  and 
the  wide  interest  in  human  afEairs  as  a  whole.  The 
historical  sense  was  to  be  aroused  from  its  long  sleep 
in  the  eighteenth  centiiry,  which  Gibbon  alone  had 
interrupted,  towards  the  close  of  the  period,  in  his 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  (1776-88),  and 
which  Edmund  Burke,  statesman  and  pamphleteer, 
had  rebelled  against  in  his  published  thoughts  and  re- 
flections. The  problem  was  not  so  much  how  history 
should  be  written — the  conflict  of  schools  came  later, 
when  the  historians  were  at  work — ;  the  prehminary 
problem  was  to  render  the  past  attractive,  to  turn 
contemplation  backwards,  and  to  extend  to  the  hap- 
penings of  former  times  the  sympathy  and  the  active 
curiosity  which  were  the  mark  of  contemporary  thought. 
The  impulse  to  escape  from  fixed  conditions  of  a 
known  and  a  limited  horizon,  which  had  driven  Mrs. 
Radclifie  to  old  castles,  Cowper  and  Wordsworth  to  the 
countryside,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  to  the  mysteries 


104     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

— the  familiar  strangenesses — of  the  hearts  of  men, 
which  drove  revolutionaries  like  Godwin  to  imaginary- 
states  of  perfection  released  from  the  conventions  of 
his  own  day,  was  the  same  impulse,  differently  directed, 
which  revived  the  historical  sense,  and  induced  men 
of  imagination  to  erplore  not  merely  the  facts,  but  the 
feelings  which  inspired  the  facts,  of  past  ages  and 
achievements.  It  is  the  humanizing  of  time  past  which 
arrests  us  in  the  work  of  the  writers  to  be  discussed,  their 
sudden,  deep  realization  of  it  as  a  world  of  psychological 
processes,  of  life  and  movement  and  temperament,  of 
tears  and  laughter,  of  women,  children,  and  armed 
men.  The  day  would  come — it  has  come  long  since — 
when  vivid  writing  would  be  discredited,  when  the 
personal  bias  would  be  distrusted  as  disguising 
the  impartiaUty  of  truth,  and  when  the  status  of 
history  would  pass  from  an  art  to  an  exact  science — 
from  the  treatment  by  interpretation  to  the  treatment 
by  demonstration.  Meanwhile,  it  was  to  enjoy  the 
genius  of  Carlyle,  Macaulay  and  Froude  ;  and,  even 
before  their  sympathies  helped  to  illuminate  the  past, 
its  romantic  aspect  had  appealed  with  penetrating 
force  to  a  writer  whose  constructive  talents,  seeking 
malleable  material,  seized  on  the  folklore  and  legends 
and  heroic  annals  of  the  North,  his  own  Scotland 
which  he  loved.  He  taught  his  countrymen  to  associate 
them  with  the  natural  features  of  the  land — its  heather, 
as  a  covert  for  the  foeman,  its  mountains,  its  secluded 
lochs,  its  wild,  uncultivated  stretches,  its  hardy  and 
independent  sons — ;  and,  fashioning  this  rich  material 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  105 

to  the  literary  temper  of  his  times,  he  produced  in 
succession  historical  ballads  and  romances  of  literally 
radiant  power. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  (1771-1832)  satisfied  at  once  the 
ardent  passion  for  adventure,  the  increased  emotional 
sensibilities,  and  the  exploring  curiosity  of  his  age. 
He  summed  up  in  his  one  person  the  various  tendencies 
which  we  have  traced  in  contemporary  literature  ;  and 
if  research  shows  that  he  owed  the  direction  of  his 
genius  to  Germany — the  debt  is  partly  acknowledged 
by  his  translation  of  Biirger's  Lenore — ,  or  if  the  present 
generation,  fed  full  with  fiction,  and  jealous  of  the 
accuracy  of  historians,  find  Scott  tedious  or  '  untrue ' — 
by  the  standards  of  demonstrable,  not  imaginative 
truth — ,  yet  no  deductions  can  detract  from  the  victory 
won  by  Scott  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  over  readers  and  writers  alike.  He  was  the 
master  of  them  all,  the  unapproached  king  of  letters, 
reigning  royally  in  the  North,  and  interpreting  to  his 
subjects  the  feelings  and  aims  of  their  own  hearts. 

It  was  Thomas  Percy  (1729-1811),  a  grocer's  son,  Bishop 
who  became  Dean  of  Carlisle  and  Bishop  of  Dromore,  e^^I^^ 
who  gave  the  lead  in  this  direction.  He  had  been  the 
first  to  tap  the  wealth  of  mediaeval  ballad-literature,  and 
thus  to  point  the  way  to  that  revolution  of  taste  which 
was  to  establish  Scott  in  the  North  as  literary  dictator 
in  the  place  of  Dr.  Johnson  in  the  South.  Percy's 
Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry  were  first  issued  in 
1765,  and  were  available,  accordingly,  when  Scott  was 
a  boy.    He  seized  upon  them  with  avidity,  especially 


io6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

on  the  Border  ballads  which  included  the  famous 
'  Chevy  Chase  '  ;  and  he  supplemented  his  familiarity 
with  this  book  by  intercourse  with  Scottish  country 
folk,  from  whose  homely  and  ilUterate  lore  he  learned, 
and  committed  to  memory,  many  tales  and  sayings 
and  phrases  which  were  afterwards  embodied  in  his 
works. 

With  all  his  immense  range  of  reading,  it  was  always 
the  external  features  of  what  he  read  that  attracted  him. 
In  a  sense,  Scott  never  had  a  style :  he  absorbed  a 
national  spirit,  and  returned,  as  it  were,  great  pieces 
of  national  literature  without  particular  attention  to 
details  of  form.  He  wrote  with  extraordinary  rapidity, 
chiefly,  as  it  seems  to-day,  because  his  main  labour  in 
writing  was  to  deposit  rather  than  to  compose  ;  one 
after  another  he  laid  down  the  huge  fragments  of  his 
work,  manipulating  them  as  he  unburdened  himself, 
and  turning  swiftly  to  the  next.  Thus,  he  tells  us  that 
Coleridge's  Christabel  inspired  his  own  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel  (1805),  and  we  see  at  once  that  he  refers  to 
an  influence  on  the  ear,  not  the  mind.  There  is  a 
formal  likeness  between  the  two — a  likeness  in  the 
accidents  of  metre,  which  both  owe  in  the  last  resort 
to  the  self-taught  skill  of  old  minstrelsy  ;  but  Scott, 
seizing  the  most  obvious  characteristic  which  memory 
most  readily  retained,  speaks  of  Coleridge  as  his  master 
and  of  himself  as  the  pupil  in  this  instance.  For  com- 
plete understanding,  however,  it  is  more  relevant  to 
note  that  Scott,  in  1802,  supplemented  Bishop  Percy's 
work  by  a  collection  in  two  volumes  of  The  Minstrelsy 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  107 

of  the  Scottish  Border,  compiled,  unlike  the  '  fakes  ' 
of  Chatterton  and  Macpherson  towards  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth- century,  by  careful  study  at  first-hand 
among  the  peasantry  of  the  Lowlands. 

In  these  years  just  subsequent  to  his  marriage  (1797)  Scott's 
he  was  still  playing  at  the  law,  obediently  to  the  wishes  ity. 
of  his  father,  who  was  a  Writer  to  the  Signet,  and  of 
whom,  in  the  paternal  relationship,  a  sketch  is  given 
in  Redgauntlet.  Shortly  afterwards,  the  Sheriffship  of 
Selkirkshire  gave  Scott  a  regular  income,  which  was 
supplemented  by  his  appointment  to  a  Clerkship  of 
Session  ;  and  in  1804  he  felt  justified,  to  employ  his 
own  famous  phrase,  in  making  literature  '  a  staff,  not 
a  crutch  '.  For  twenty  years  he  leaned  upon  the  staff 
with  complete  confidence  and  security.  From  1805, 
the  year  of  The  Lay,  through  Marmion  (1808),  The  Lady 
of  the  Lake  (1810),  Rokeby  (1812)  and  The  Lord  of  the 
Isles  (1815),  these  poems  of  the  romantic  revival  flowed 
delightfully  from  his  pen,  and  when,  in  1814,  the  stream 
was  deflected  to  prose,  there  was  no  slackening  of 
strength.  Waverley  (1814)  was  the  first  of  a  series  of 
novels  which  continued  triumphantly  through  Guy 
Mannering  (1815),  The  Antiquary  (1816),  Old  Mortality 
(1816),  Rob  Roy  (1818),  The  Heart  of  Midlothian,  The 
Bride  of  Lammermoor  and  A  Legend  of  Montrose  (1818- 
19),  Ivanhoe  (1820),  The  Monastery  and  The  Abbot 
(1820),  Kenilworth  (1821),  The  Pirate  (1822),  The 
Fortunes  of  Nigel  (1822),  Peveril  of  the  Peak  (1823), 
Quentin  Durward  (1823),  St.  Ronan's  Well  (1824), 
Redgauntlet  (1824),  to  The  Betrothed  and  The  Talisman 


io8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  1825 — the  year  of  crisis  in  Scott's  affairs.  It  is  a 
wonderful  list,  Homeric  in  its  range  and  power,  and 
with  this  difference  from  Homer,  that  there  is  no 
doubt  as  to  the  singleness  of  authorship.  It  is  hardly- 
conceivable  to-day  that  a  score  of  novels  of  this 
quality — all  the  masterpieces  are  in  the  list — should 
have  been  written  by  one  man,  not  driven  by  stress  of 
poverty  but  purely  by  the  delight  of  invention,  within 
barely  a  dozen  years.  The  mere  bulk  of  the  achieve- 
ment is  astounding  ;  and,  measured  by  quality,  not  by 
bulk,  the  record  is  more  astounding  still. 
His  life  A  brief  tract  of  biography  must  be  interposed  be- 

acter.  "  tween  the  catalogue  and  the  criticism.  Shortly  after 
the  '  staff  and  crutch  '  epigram  had  marked  Scott's 
abandonment  of  the  law,  he  removed  to  an  estate 
on  the  Tweed,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  Abbots- 
ford.  There  he  brought  up  his  children  and  cultivated 
a  country  gentleman's  life.  He  took  these  duties,  or 
privileges,  more  seriously  than  he  need,  aiming  in  his 
indefatigable  labours  at  the  honourable  ambition  of 
founding  a  family  in  the  more  conventional  use  of  the 
term.  The  desire  was  typical  of  the  man,  who  was  an 
idealist  in  his  egoism.  His  whole  being  was  romantic. 
He  could  do  nothing  in  a  small  way.  The  singer  of  his 
nation's  songs,  the  narrator  of  his  country's  legends, 
Scott  of  Abbotsford  was  to  become  a  name  and  a  fame 
in  his  own  day,  a  representative  in  his  own  person, 
not  of  the  writer's  craft — '  the  author  of  Waverley ' 
was  his  pen-name — ,  but  of  Scottish  custom  and  tradi- 
tion manifest  in  the  hospitable  grandeur,  the  homely 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  109 

state,  of  a  Scottish  laird.  His  anonymity,  or  the 
shadow  of  it,  was  preserved  till  1820,  when  his  reputa- 
tion was  recognized  by  a  baronetcy,  and  it  was  a  part 
of  the  mystery  which  surromided  him  —  no  petty 
secrecy  of  a  small  mind,  but  the  distance-keeping  awe 
of  genius — that,  as  his  house  became  more  and  more 
the  centre  of  culture  in  the  North,  his  friends  and 
visitors  should  forget  that  the  host  who  entertained  them 
so  genially  had  been  working  since  daybreak  among 
his  books.  He  kept  the  instruments  of  his  toil  out  of 
sight,  deliberately  isolating  his  finished  work  from  the 
details  of  production,  which  are  so  much  vulgarized 
to-day  by  the  curiosity  of  newspapers,  and  which 
even  then  might  have  detracted  from  the  dignity  of 
authorship. 

The  Waverley  Novels  became  an  institution,  and 
their  author  aimed  at  this  end.  Its  pursuit  brought 
dangers  in  its  train.  Scott's  character  was  affected 
by  his  ambition.  His  large  views  became  enlarged 
beyond  the  control  of  his  own  action,  for  his  hands 
were  already  too  full  of  work  and  multifarious  em- 
ployment. He  relaxed  his  hold  on  affairs,  till  his 
relations  with  Constable  and  Ballantyne,  when  the 
crash  came  in  1825,  involved  him,  through  his  own 
negligence,  in  large  liabilities  which  he  refused  to  evade 
by  bankruptcy.  There  is  no  blame  to  be  allotted  ; 
it  is  swallowed  up  in  reverent  admiration  of  the 
splendid  strength  of  Scott's  character.  The  ambition 
which  had  founded  Abbotsford,  and  aU  that  the  name 
implied,  which  had  won  honours  and  a  title,  and  had 


no  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

brought  the  Scottish  genius  to  self-expression,  availed 
to  sustain  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  task  of  paying  his 
creditors,  to  whom,  at  the  age  of  fifty-four,  with  twenty 
years  of  hard  work  behind  him,  he  owed  over  £100,000. 
The  debt  was  discharged  in  full,  and  with  it,  we  may 
fairly  say,  Scott  in  his  own  person  discharged  an 
obligation  of  noblesse. 

It  was  inevitable  that  some  compensation  should  be 
exacted  for  this  toil,  and  literature  suffered  in  Scott's 
hands.  Woodstock  (1826)  and  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth 
(1828)  show  signs  of  a  lower  spirit,  if  not  of  a  slower 
imagination,  while  the  loss  of  gaiety,  of  nimbus,  is 
even  more  obvious  in  the  Chronicles  of  the  Canongate 
(1827-28).  In  Anne  of  Geierstein  (1829)  there  is  a 
flicker  of  the  old  power,  but  Count  Robert  of  Paris  and 
Castle  Dangerous,  which  belong  to  the  last  year  of 
Scott's  life,  bear  clear  signs  of  a  sinking  flame.  In 
these  years,  too,  he  produced  his  contributions  to 
Scottish  history  in  The  Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  and 
his  Life  of  Napoleon,  and  other  works — altogether  a 
magnificent  response  from  a  man  broken  in  fortune  to 
the  call  of  honour  and  reparation.  He  died  in  1832, 
at  Abbotsford  restored,  his  work  twice  done,  and  the 
guerdon  twice  won. 
The  What  is  the  result  of  his  Hfe's  work  from  the  point  of 

orscott"  view  of  the  historian  of  British  literature  ?  To  him 
it  matters  not  at  all  that  Waverley  gratified  an  ambition, 
and  Anne  of  Geierstein  satisfied  a  debt.  Our  business, 
throughout  this  history,  is  the  increment  to  truth  by 
the  vision  of  British  men  of  letters,    and,  judged  by 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  iii 

this  canon,  Scott's  title  is  supreme.  He  is  among  the 
fathers  of  literature,  a  pious  founder  of  a  dynasty,  or 
kind,  which  was  not  destined  to  decay.  Like  Cromwell 
and  Napoleon  in  affairs,  like  Shakespeare,  Wordsworth 
and  Goethe  in  his  own  department  of  letters,  Scott 
stands  above  criticism  in  the  sense  that,  whatever  his 
mistakes,  no  later  comer  has  improved  upon  him.  We 
may  say,  Here  he  failed  ;  we  cannot  say.  Here  so-and-so 
did  better  ;  and,  without  such  a  standard  of  judgment, 
the  most  hostile  critic  is  disarmed.  Scott  fathered  the 
historical  romance.  He  re-peopled  the  silent  spaces  of 
bygone  days.  By  the  magic  of  his  pen  he  restored 
Scotland  to  her  past,  and  re-invented  from  snatches  of 
old  songs  and  broken  records  of  past  fabulists  connected 
harmonies  of  arms  and  men.  To  this  Orpheus  of  a 
Northern  sky  the  land  yielded  up  its  dead  ;  the  Border 
territories  of  romance  were  bold  and  adventurous 
again  ;  Robin  Hood  returned  at  that  call  to  his  merry 
men  in  Sherwood  Forest ;  Rebecca,  the  Jewess,  won 
hearts  which  her  sister,  Jessica,  had  left  cold  ;  Mary 
Stuart  and  Amy  Robsart  revived  the  wonder  and 
the  thrill  of  Elizabethan  England ;  Jeanie  Deans, 
adventuring  to  London,  Lucy,  Meg  Merrilies,  Diana 
Vernon — Scott's  stage  is  as  full  of  women  characters 
as  of  all  sorts  and  degrees  of  men  ;  and  if  he  lacked 
the  subtler  knowledge — the  cosmic  comedy — of  George 
Meredith  in  delineating  female  types,  yet  in  range  of 
interest  and  in  truth  of  outline  he  is  comparable  only 
with  Shakespeare.  He  has  not  all  Shakespeare's  gifts  ; 
none,  save  the  master,  commands  all  the  keys  of  human 


112     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

experience,  and  of  character  moulded  by  action.  But 
the  comparison  is  admissible,  and  it  is  noteworthy,  at 
least,  that  Shakespeare,  like  Scott,  made  his  art  sub- 
servient to  ambition.  And,  apart  altogether  from 
Scott's  skill  in  clothing  the  dry  bones  of  history,  and 
the  yet  drier  bones  of  legend,  with  life  and  verisimilitude, 
apart  from  his  unfailing  truth  to  the  light  and  reason  of 
imagination,  and  apart  even  from  his  interest  as  a 
mere  teller  of  moving  tales  —  apart,  in  three  words, 
from  his  work  as  historian,  poet  and  novelist — ,  Scotland 
owes  a  debt  to  Scott  which  is  still  renewed  every  year, 
when  visitors  to  the  Trossachs  and  Loch  Katrine  love 
the  land  the  better  for  his  praises.  As  R.  D.  Black- 
more,  by  Lorna  Doone  (1869)  surpassed  the  eloquence 
of  nature  in  a  Somersetshire  valley,  as  Thomas  Hardy 
(6.  1840),  by  his  novels  and  his  poems,  has  made 
'Wessex'  his  own,  so  Scott,  honouring  Scotland,  has 
added  to  her  renown,  and  has  brought  to  light  beauties 
of  landscape  and  capacities  of  character  which  had 
otherwise  passed  unseen. 
Criticism  It  should  be  repeated  that  Scott  had  no  style,  at 
style.  least  in  the  esoteric  sense  in  which  style  is  valued  to-day. 
And,  even  without  such  diminishment  of  the  lack  that 
is  confessed,  it  is  clear  that,  ahke  in  the  ballad  narratives 
of  the  first  period  of  Scott's  work  and  in  the  historical 
romances  of  the  second,  he  wrote  straight  out  of  a  full 
memory.  But  at  the  same  time,  and  still  not  for  the 
esoterics,  Scott  had  a  style  in  the  sense  that  he  seldom, 
if  ever,  mistook  the  relations  between  matter  and  form. 
As  he  abandoned  verse  for  prose,  when  Byron  passed 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  113 

him  in  his  own  vein,  so,  with  equal  bonhomie,  and — in 
his  age,  at  least — a  rare  avoidance  of  theorizing,  he 
displayed   a   sound    comprehension,   not  only   of   the 
practice  of  fiction,  but  also  of  its  principles.     He  had 
an  instinct  for  differences  of  material,   and  for  the 
consequent  variations  of  manner.     Take,  for  instance, 
the  author's  Introduction,  dated  February,  1832,  to  St. 
Ronan's  Well  (1824),  and  these  virtues  will  be  manifest. 
The  novel  is  intended,  he  says,   '  celehrare  domestica 
facta — to  give  an  imitation  of  the  shifting  manners  of 
our  own  time,  and  paint  scenes  the  original  of  which 
are  daily  passing  round  us'.     He  adopted  this  kind,  he 
continues,  with  the  same  genial  obviousness  concealing 
its  force  as  criticism,  '  rather  from  the  tempting  circum- 
stance of  its  offering  some  novelty  in  his  compositions, 
and  avoiding  worn-out  characters  and  positions ',  than 
from  the  hope  of  rivalling  such  ladies  as  Miss  Burney, 
Miss  Austen  and  Miss  Edgeworth,  whose  success,  Scott 
generously  alleges,  '  seems  to  have  appropriated  this 
province  of  the  novel  as  exclusively  their  own '.     The 
entire  preface  should  be  read — it  is  brief,  and  modest, 
and  instructive — in  order  to  do  fuU  justice  to  Scott's 
critical   powers.     There   are   mind   and   heart   in   his 
writings,  knowledge  and  feeling  combined,  and  these 
lent  the  swing  and  movement,  the  Homeric  quality,  to 
his  work. 

There  is  nearly  always,  too,  let  us  add  for  the  un- 
doing  of   purer  stylists   of   meaner  force,    a  reserve 
of  strength  on  which  to  draw.    Partly  because  Scott 
was  too  wise  to  exceed  the  limits  of  his  powers,  his 
8 


114     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

reader's  taste  never  grates  on  the  narrow  edge  of 
capacity.  Most  writers  suffer  their  readers  at  one  or 
another  point  to  feel  a  sense  of  strain,  as  if  the  border 
had  been  reached — the  shelving  fringe  of  shingle  dragged 
down  by  the  disappointed  tide.  There  is  nearly  always 
fulness  in  Scott ;  his  writing,  in  technical  phrase,  is 
seldom  or  never  '  thin  '.  And  these  qualities  of  swing 
and  fulness  carry  him  triumphantly  through  places 
where  greater  writers,  from  the  point  of  view  of  style, 
fall  short  of  the  standard  which  they  have  set.  Scott's 
confidence  does  not  betray  him,  whether  in  tragic  or 
humorous  situations.  One  does  not  say  of  him,  as  of 
other  masters.  This  is  less  or  more  Scott-like  than 
that ;  the  Wordsworthian  note  may  elude  Wordsworth, 
but  Scott,  except  when  health  failed,  never  missed  his 
aim  in  writing.  Health  is,  perhaps,  the  just  word. 
There  is  a  gay  and  a  radiant  wholesomeness  in  the 
poems  and  novels  alike  which  merges  the  errors  of 
the  craftsman  in  the  joy  of  the  inventor.  Reading 
Scott,  we  return  to  a  world  in  which  sickliness  is  yet 
imbom  ;  and,  if  some  of  the  qualities  are  wanting 
with  their  defects,  if  love  is  less  than  fully  impassioned, 
and  contemplation  not  unfathomably  deep,  Scott's 
world  is  bright  and  true,  and  the  hearts  of  living  men 
and  women  beat  beneath  the  properties  of  the  novelist. 

The  decay     Instead  of  following  the  decline  of  historical  romance 

historical  through  William   Harrison   Ainsworth   (1805-82)  and 

novel.       Q,  p,  R,  James  (1799-1860),  it  would  not  be  illogical 

in  this  context  to  pursue  the  growth  of  history  through 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  115 

Thomas  Carlyle  (1795-1881)  and  Thomas  Babington 
Macaulay  (1800-59).  Each  was  actively  engaged  in 
literature  during  the  lifetime  of  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
Garlyle  had  been  at  work  for  ten  years,  seeking  channels 
of  self -expression,  and  Macaulay,  whose  essay  on  Milton 
appeared  in  1825,  was  attached  to  The  Edinburgh 
Review.  But  their  influence  belongs  to  a  later  period, 
and  one  observation  only  is  due  here  to  the  greatness 
of  Scott  in  connection  with  these  two  pairs  of  writers, 
that,  while  his  method  in  history  proved  inimitable, 
his  theory  of  history  found  historians  to  develop  it. 
Of  the  imitators  of  his  method  it  is  to  be  said  that 
Scott  wrote  for  grown  men,  Ainsworth  and  James  for 
schoolboys.  This,  at  least,  is  the  verdict  of  posterity, 
now  that  the  early  glamour  has  passed  away,  and  the 
difference  helps  us  to  realize  that  what  is  vital  and 
permanent  in  Scott  is  not  the  form  which  he  chose,  but 
the  idea  that  underlay  it.  To  visualize  history  and  to 
apply  to  time  past  common  canons  of  humanity  were 
parts  of  the  liberal  aim  which  informed  the  method  of 
Scott,  but  which  Ainsworth  and  James  subordinated 
to  the  meretricious  claims  of  story  and  adventure. 
Rookwood,  Jack  Sheppard,  The  Tower  of  London, 
Windsor  Castle,  and  Old  St.  PauVs,  and  the  rest  of  the 
nine-and-thirty  novels  which  Ainsworth  produced  in  the 
intervals  of  editing  Bentleifs  Miscellany  and  The  New 
Monthly  Magazine,  stand  high  in  their  own  class,  but 
they  are  novels  with  a  historical  background,  not  history 
re-incarnated  in  romance.  The  same  criticism  applies 
with  even  stronger  force  to  the  works  in  this  kind  of 


ii6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

James,  whose  stereotyped  opening  with  '  a  solitary 
horseman '  emerging  across  a  plain  hastened  the  decline 
of  the  genus  ;  as  Historiographer  Royal  to  William  iv, 
he  wrote  some  creditable  memoirs  and  biographies. 
But  it  is  on  other  lines  than  theirs  that  Scott's  lifework 
was  continued  by  the  prose-writers  of  the  second 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Before  pursuing  this  theme,  we  have  to  take  up  the 
thread  of  poetry  which  Scott  deliberately  broke  in 
1814,  when  he  laid  aside  verse  for  prose.  What  was 
it  that  caused  this  change,  in  the  popular  author  of 
Marmion,  and  of  what  sort  were  the  writers  into  whose 
keeping  poetry  was  transferred  ? 


§  8.  IMAGINATIVE  POETRY,  II. 


THREE  poets  pre-eminently  respond  to  the  question 
at  the  end  of  the  last  section :  Byron,  Shelley 
and  Keats.  The  poets  of  the  earlier  period,  born  chiefly 
in  the  seventies  of  the  eighteenth  century,  had  been 
alike  in  the  fortune  of  long  life.  Scott  died  in  1832  ; 
Lamb  and  Coleridge  survived  him  till  1834,  Southey 
till  1843,  and  Campbell  till  1844.  Wordsworth  died 
at  eighty  in  1850,  in  the  same  year  as  Jeffrey,  his  re- 
viewer ;  Thomas  Moore  in  1852  ;  Samuel  Rogers  at 
ninety- two  in  1855,  and  Landor  at  eighty-nine  in  1864. 
They  were  all  men  of  ripe  years.  Fate  did  not  grudge 
them  time  to  fulfil  the  tasks  they  undertook. 

They  all  saw  the  birth  and  death  of  Byron,  Shelley  Two 
and  Keats.  Rogers's  ninety-two  years  were  longer  than  *^°"P  " 
the  sum  of  the  lives  of  these  three  combined.  He  was 
twenty-five  when  Byron  was  born,  and  outKved  him 
thirty-one  years.  Keats  died  at  twenty-five,  and 
Shelley  at  just  under  thirty.  All  the  lifetime  of  the 
three  fell  between  1788  and  1824. 

These  facts  and  figures  are  not  cited  for  the  mere 
interest  of  the  dates.     They  are  important  to  criticism, 

XX7 


ii8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

too.  Sorting  the  names  into  two  groups,  as  of  the 
elder  men  who  died  late  and  of  the  younger  men  who 
died  early,  it  is  to  be  noted  at  once  that  Scott,  when 
he  resigned  poetry,  resigned  it  into  the  younger  men's 
keeping.  In  1812  there  were  two  poets  who  '  counted ', 
the  author  of  Marmion  in  Edinburgh,  and  the  author 
of  Childe  Harold  in  London.  In  1814  there  was  only 
one  :  Scott  had  started  the  '  Waverley  '  novels. 

Meanwhile,  what  had  become  of  the  older  group, 
and  of  Wordsworth  especially,  with  his  Excursion  in 
1814  ?  Judged  by  the  test  of  popularity,  his  brilliant 
junior  had  passed  him.  It  pleased  Bjiron  to  pour 
scorn  on  the  older  and  more  placid  writers,  and,  in 
competition  with  Byron's  wild  tales,  these  were  left 
hopelessly  behind.  In  a  sense,  they  did  not  bid  for 
the  popularity  of  a  season  ;  it  was  not  to  no  purpose 
that  they  had  time  on  their  side.  Scott  himself  took 
the  longer  road,  in  preference  to  disputing  with  Byron 
for  the  first  place  in  the  field  in  which  he  had  been  first 
in  time.  Another  question  suggests  itself,  to  which  no 
clear  reply  can  be  given.  This  group  of  three  young 
poets,  who  wrote  and  ceased  within  the  lifetime  of 
the  youngest  of  the  older  group, — how  far  is  a  critic 
competent  to  pass  judgment  on  their  work  ?  It 
was  obviously  unfinished.  They  are,  in  Shelley's 
own  phrase,  heirs  of  unfulfilled  renown.  The  broken 
columns  appeal  to  time  to  reserve  judgment  for  eternity. 
Yet,  plainly,  something  must  be  said.  What  we 
miss  is  not  so  much  the  poems  which  they  did  not 
write  (it  has  been  said  that  literature  could  spare  all 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  119 

that  Wordsworth  wrote  after  forty) ;  what  is  wanting 
is,  rather,  the  standard  which  every  man  sets  for  his 
own  appraisement,  if  he  live  out  the  psalmist's  span. 
The  value  of  Wordsworth's  golden  decade — 1798  to 
1808  (the  reckoning  is  Matthew  Arnold's) — is  en- 
hanced, if  not  by  the  merit,  at  least  by  the  virtues  of 
his  after-work.  It  added  constancy  of  purpose,  faith, 
loyalty,  conscientiousness,  all  the  qualities  that  make 
for  confidence.  We  know  these  elder  writers  through 
and  through,  in  their  old  age  as  in  their  youth.  Are 
we  equally  confident  about  the  young  ?  Would 
Byron  have  ceased  to  be  Byronic  ?  Would  Shelley 
have  found  out  his  father-in-law  ?  Would  Keats 
always  have  cared  for  beauty  first  ?  Time  should  have 
answered  all  such  questions.  '  By  our  own  spirits 
are  we  deified ',  and  judgment,  without  this  evidence, 
is  a  halting  and  lame  afiair,  unverified,  uncorrected, 
unconfirmed. 

Lastly,  of  these  two  groups,  the  one  of  ripened  men, 
the  other  of  precocious  boys,  can  we  argue  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown  ?  Are  we  to  say  of  Keats  : 
he  wrote  so  many  poems  in  ten  years  ;  fifty  more  years 
were  his  due  ;  five  times  as  much  poetry  was  to  come  ? 
Again,  if  five  times  as  much,  then  how  good  ?  Less 
good,  or  better  ?  A  reply  by  analogy  may  be  sought, 
but  it  is  necessarily  very  imperfect.  Most  of  the 
elder  line  fell  away  from  their  great  beginnings.  The 
age  itself  fell  away  from  the  high  hopes  of  revolution. 
The  tract  of  social  reform  was  dreary  and  flat  to  tra- 
verse.    In  the  late  Georgian  days,  the  units  of  society 


120  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

sparkled.     Holland  House  and  other  centres  were  full 
of  brilliant  men  and  women,  and  the  art  of  conversation 
flourished.     But  the  general  effect  was  dull.     The  units 
did  not  coalesce,  and  art  and  letters  languished  in  the 
shallows.     Later  on,  the  contrary  is  true.     There  was 
less  glitter  and  more  light.     The  fresh  start  of  1832 
proved  an  enduring  inspiration,  and  the  glowing  interest 
was  reflected  in  the  powers  of  the  writers  who  accom- 
panied it.     To  these  writers  it  seems  very  likely  that 
Keats  at  any  rate  would  have  belonged.     He  was   the 
youngest  of  the  three,  and  the  nearest  in  age  to  the 
new  era. 
Soott         The   actual   historical   happenings   do   not   exactly 
ByroDi    correspond  with  their  appearance  in  restropect.     There 
was  no  collision  of  great  wits.     A  pleasant  record  of 
amenities  lends  a  touch  of  human  feeling  to  the  planetary 
splendour  of  the  writers,  who,  the  one  with  tranquil 
illumination,  and  the  other  with  intermittent  lightning, 
ruled  the  literary  horizon  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century.     It  was  not  long  after  Byron,  in 
his  own  words,  awoke  one  morning  and  found  himself 
famous,  that  Scott,  a  visitor  to  London,  met  him  at 
John    Murray's,    in   Albemarle    Street.     They   found, 
according  to  Scott's  letters,  '  a  great  deal  to  say  to 
each  other  '.     Their  host  was  Byron's  publisher,  and 
the  annals  of  his  craft  contain  no  record  more  attractive 
than  that  of  the  relations  between  these  two.     Brilliant, 
wayward,  unstable,  affectionate.  Lord  Byron  found  in 
Murray  the  countervailing,   complementary  qualities, 
and  a  sympathy  upon  which  he  could  always  depend. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  121 

It  was  tested,  finally,  ten  years  afterwards,  when,  in 
1824,  the  dead  poet's  memoir  of  his  life  was  burned 
by  his  publisher  in  Albemarle  Street,  with  the  consent 
of  his  family  and  in  the  presence  of  Thomas  Moore,  to 
whose  loving  and  faithful  pen  the  biographer's  task 
was  entrusted.  But  of  this,  and  of  Scott's  embarrass- 
ment by  the  houses  of  Constable  and  Ballantyne, 
there  was  no  thought  in  these  days,  when  romantic 
taste  was  veering  from  the  North  and  the  West  to 
the  South  and  the  East,  from  the  simple  vigour  of 
Scott's  tales  of  old  chivalry  and  feudalism  to  Byron's 
bolder  tales  of  rich  colour  and  warm  blood.  Grace 
marked  the  transition.  In  1816,  Scott  reviewed  the  Third 
Canto  of  Childe  Harold  in  Murray's  Quarterly  Review, 
and  recognized  that  Byron  '  was  placed  pre-eminent 
among  the  literary  men  of  his  country  by  general 
acclamation'.  At  the  next  available  opportunity,  in 
the  Fourth  Canto  of  the  same  poem,  BjTon  celebrated 

Grtie  southern  Scott,  the  minstrel  who  called  forth 

A  new  creation  with  his  magic  line. 

And,  like  the  Ariosto  of  the  North, 

Sang  Ladye-love  and  War,  Romance  and  Knightly  worth. 

Finally,  in  December,  1821,  in  a  letter  from  Edinburgh 
to  John  Murray,  Scott  accepted,  '  with  feelings  of  great 
obligation,  the  flattering  proposal  of  Lord  Byron '  to 
prefix  his  name  to  '  the  very  grand  and  tremendous 
drama  of  Cain.  You  have  much  occasion ',  he  added, 
'  for  some  mighty  spirit,  like  Lord  Byron,  to  come 
down  and  trouble  the  waters  '.  There  was  courtesy 
on  Parnassus. 


122     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Boldness       Wherein,   precisely,   did  it  lie,   this  fascination   of 
of  Byron. 

Byron  ?     There  was,  first,  the  self-confidence  of  his 

poetry,  even  on  the  merely  technical  side.     No  one 

could  withstand  a  poet — especially  a  hundred  years 

ago,    when   versification   was   still  hampered   by   the 

traditions  of  the  eighteenth  century — who  was  to  essay 

such  tours  de  force  as  a  rhyme  to  '  intellectual '  i,  or 

whof  in  the  First  Canto  of  Childe  Harold — the  first 

'  fytte  ',  as  Byron  called  it, — contrasted  a  bull-fight  at 

Cadiz  with  a  typical  Sunday  in  London,  and  invented 

such    amorous    invocations    as    the    following    stanza 

conveyed  : 

The  seal  Love's  dimpling  finger  hath  impressed 

Denotes  how  soft  the  chin  which  bears  his  touch : 

Her  Ups,  whose  kisses  pout  to  leave  their  nest. 

Bid  man  be  valiant  ere  he  merit  such : 

Her  glance  how  wildly  beautiful  !    how  much 

Hath  Phoebus  wooed  in  vain  to  spoil  her  cheek, 

Which  glows  yet  smoother  from  his  amorous  clutch  ! 

Who  round  the  North  for  paler  dames  would  seek  ? 

How  poor  their  forms  appear !  how  languid,  wan,  and  weak ! 

Society  quivered,  and  gave  way.  The  appeal  of  Byron 
was  irresistible.  The  '  spruce  citizen  ',  untravelled,  and 
unqualified  to  test  these  praises,  swallowed  the  illusion 
whole.  He  yielded,  if  not  his  mind,  at  least  his  emotions 
to  the  spell.  The  Giaour,  mysteriously  termed  '  a 
fragment  of  a  Turkish  tale  ',  and  composed  straightway 
in  the  metre  which  Scott  had  adopted  for  his  ballad- 

*  But — Oh  !  ye  lords  of  ladies  intellectual. 
Inform  us  truly,  have  they  not  hen-pecked  you  all  ? 

Don  Juan,  i.  xxii. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  123 

poems,  followed  Childe  Harold  in  1813,  and  ran  through 
edition  after  edition.  A  voluptuous  beauty  was  spread 
over  it ;  names,  unfamiliar  and  alluring,  conspired 
with  the  local  machinery  of  camels,  turbans  and  the 
rest,  to  work,  like  opium,  on  men's  wits  : 

To-night  set  Rhamazani's  sun ; 
To-night,  the  Bairam  feast's  begun ; 
To-night — but  who  and  what  art  thou, 
Of  foreign  garb  and  fearful  brow  ? 
And  what  are  these  to  thine  and  thee. 
That  thou  shouldst  either  pause  or  flee  ? 

'  What's  Hecuba  to  him ',  we  echo,  with  the  thrill  in 
our  blood  benumbed.  But,  though  these  lines  {Giaour, 
228-33)  carry  now,  in  the  scrutiny  of  a  sophisticated 
age,  the  mere  face-value  of  their  diction,  on  Byron's 
own  generation,  eager  for  novelty  and  mystery,  for 
adventure  without  peril,  and  for  the  gratification  of 
new-awakened  senses,  they  struck  with  extraordinary 
delight ;  and,  when  the  replies  to  the  rhetorical  questions 
— the  who^a  and  the  whafs  of  his  treasure-house — 
led  into  paths  of  romance,  rich  with  exotic  blossoms 
and  odorous  with  perfume,  unknown  to  the  stay-at- 
home  world ;  when  the  narrative  took  such  forms  of 
passion  as 

But  thou,  false  Infidel !  shall  writhe 
Beneath  avenging  Monkir's  scythe. 


or 
or 


The  cold  in  clime  are  cold  in  blood, 

Go,  when  the  hunter's  hand  hath  wrung 
From  forest-cave  her  shrieking  young. 
And  calm  the  lonely  lioness : 
But  soothe  not,  mock  not  my  distress  ! 


work. 


124     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 
or 

Yet  still  'tis  there  !     In  silence  stands, 
And  beckons  with  beseeching  hands  ! 
With  braided  hair,  and  bright  black  eye — 
I  knew  'twas  false— she  could  not  die  ! 

then  poetry  unlocked  emotions  unsuspected  hitherto ; 
the  poets  of  a  colder  clime  were  left  behind,  and  the 
'  Byxonic  '  note — meretriciously  exalted,  and  indebted 
to  strange  gods — stimulated  a  kind  of  extra  sense  which 
is  even  yet  not  always  satisfied  by  the  response  along 
pure  channels  of  expression. 
Life  and  Byron  added  to  the  strength  of  the  note.  He  learned 
to  purify  it  in  part  from  the  chnging  disguises  of  youth. 
Life  led  him  through  devious  ways  before  the  three 
weeks'  general  mourning  and  the  thirty-seven  minute 
guns  of  the  Provisional  Government  of  Greece  pro- 
claimed the  death  of  a  Greek  hero  who  was  also  an 
English  poet.  Born  in  1788,  and  inheriting  his  grand- 
uncle's  title  when  he  was  ten  years  old,  George  Gordon, 
Lord  Byron,  took  with  him  to  Harrow  and  Cambridge 
a  natural  ambition  to  excel,  a  fiery  temper  for  the 
right,  a  wild  reputation  from  his  father,  brilliant  talents 
on  the  showy  side,  and  a  capacity  for  hard  reading. 
When  manhood  brought  its  new  appetites,  and  oppor- 
tunity, waiting  on  desire,  raised  fancy  to  passion, 
Byron's  social  position  and  literary  gifts  made  his 
excesses  notorious,  and  gradually  wove  about  his 
acts  a  curious  mesh  of  confusion  with  those  of  the 
heroes  of  his  poems.  There  is  no  doubt  he  encouraged 
the  confusion,  and  wore  his  reputation  like  a  cloak. 
His  principles,  his  indiscretions,  his  melancholy  and  his 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  125 

poetry  became  a  kind  of  fever  or  possession,  from  which 
certain  advantages — even  a  certain  immunity — were 
derived,  but  from  the  evil  of  which  he  was  never 
wholly  free. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  rehearse  the  details  of 
Byron's  marriage,  in  January,  1815,  with  Sir  Ralph 
Milbanke's  only  daughter — he  consented  to  a  separation 
in  the  following  year —  ;  nor  need  we  discuss  the  associa- 
tion of  the  names  of  Lady  Caroline  Lamb,  Clara  Clair- 
mont — a  relative  of  the  Godwins,  and  mother  of  Byron's 
daughter,  AUegra,  to  whom  he  was  deeply  attached, 
and  who  died  at  the  age  of  five  years — ,  of  the  Comtesse 
Guiccioli,  and  others.  Merciful  time  explicates  what 
the  sermons  of  the  charitable  confound.  Here,  it  is 
enough  to  note  how,  though  Bjrron  died  in  1824,  he  had 
— partly  by  weariness  of  himself,  partly  by  the  alienation 
of  others,  but  mainly,  no  doubt,  by  the  power  of  the 
genius  that  was  in  him — achieved,  through  strange  ex- 
periences, the  goal  of  poetic  expression.  He  met  Shelley 
in  1816 — (he  assisted,  in  1822,  at  the  deeply  melancholy 
ceremony  of  Shelley's  pyre  on  the  seashore  at  Viareggio) 
— and  the  intimate  talks  that  ensued  led  Byron,  if  not 
to  appreciate,  at  least  to  realize  the  attitude  towards 
the  function  of  poetry  of  Wordsworth  and  his  kind. 
There  could  be  no  sympathy,  no  true  community  of 
aim,  between  Byron,  the  apostle  of  revolt,  satirist, 
scofEer,  and  voluptuary,  and  Wordsworth,  the  patient 
builder  of  waste  places,  who  wove  his  fabric  out  of 
beliefs.  Bon  Juan  and  other  of  Byron's  pieces  are 
full  of  bitter  gibes  at  Wordsworth  as  the  prototype 


126     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  the  '  Lake  '  school,  though  Byron's  rejection  of  its 
principles,  so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  formulation, 
was  confined  to  its  external  marks.  For  Shelley  saw, 
and  could  force  the  insight  upon  Byron's  quickening 
understanding,  that  truth  finds  many  voices,  and  that 
freedom,  seeking  an  entrance,  beats  at  many  doors  at 
once.  Wordsworth's  poems  of  imagination  unsealed 
spiritual  bars  ;  Byron  struck  at  the  bars  of  the  flesh. 
The  sins  of  Don  Juan,  Sardanapalus,  Manfred,  Cain, 
and  the  rest,  interest  us  less  to-day,  and  shock  us 
hardly  at  all.  We  take  the  poet's  precepts  less  seriously, 
now  that  his  practice  is  forgotten.  There  are  certain 
threads  in  Byron's  verse,  woven  of  pure  gold  without 
alloy,  which  shine  more  frequently  as  his  powers  matured, 
and  which,  it  is  fair  to  conjecture,  would  have  formed, 
had  his  life  been  prolonged,  the  main  element  in  his 
poetry.  Greece,  idealized  in  contemplation  to  a  glory 
even  greater  than  she  won,  appealed  to  him  from  the 
disillusions  of  later  history  and  from  the  disappointments 
of  his  own  career.  Salamis,  Marathon,  Thermopylae 
— her  names  were  music  in  his  ears  ;  and  second  only 
to  Athens,  Venice,  another  bride  of  the  sea,  moved 
this  great  sea-poet  to  ecstasy.  He  aimed  at  visible 
signs.  Nature  spoke  to  him  chiefly  through  men. 
Out  of  the  dust  of  empires  and  the  ashes  of  heroes 
he  fashioned  his  most  stirring  verse.  To  hurl  down 
oppression  in  high  places,  to  denounce  hypocrisy  and 
shams,  and  evil  masquerading  as  expediency,  and 
avarice,  and  cowardice,  and  sloth,  and  to  strike  a  blow 
for  freedom  ere  he  died — this  was  the  spirit  which  moved 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  127 

Byron,  which  inspired  le  Byronisme  and  der  Byronismus 
of  a  century  of  Continental  adoration,  and  the  flame 
whereof  immortalized  his  poetry  when  its  temporary 
vogue  was  spent. 


u. 

Byron  died  in  1824.     At  the  early  age  of  thirty-six,  he  The 
had  outlived  Shelley  and  Keats,  both  of  whom  were  shene\'. 
his  juniors  by  birth.     The  writings  of  all  three  poets 
fell  between  1814  and  1824,  in  this  respect,  the  most 
wonderful  decade  which  poetic  England  has  enjoyed. 
Her  enjoyment  is  more  tranquil  in  retrospect.     Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley  (1792-1822),  like  Byron,  offended  the 
conventions  of  his  caste.    His  father  was  a  country 
gentleman,  of  all  men  the  most  unlikely  at  that  time 
to  deal  wisely  and  gently  with  an  exceptional  son.     In 
the  class  of   society  to  which  Byron  and  Shelley  be- 
longed, tke  youth  of  a  hundred  years  ago  were  held 
more  responsible  for  their  opinions,  and  were  less  care- 
fully guarded  from  the  consequences  of  their  acts,  than 
in  these  days  of  long  schooling  and  late  marriage. 
To-day,  if  a  clever  boy  of  twenty,  the  son  of  a  county 
landowner,  held  the  unorthodox  view  that  '  a  husband 
and  wife   ought  to  continue  so  long  united  as  they 
love  each  other ;   any  law  which  should  bind  them  to 
combination  for  one  moment  after  the  decay  of  their 
affection  would  be  a  most  intolerable  tyranny ',  or 
that '  the  state  of  society  in  which  we  exist  is  a  mixture 
of  feudal  savageness  and  imperfect  civilization  ;  the 


128     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

narrow  and  unenKghtened  morality  of  the  Christian 
religion  is  an  aggravation  of  these  evils  ',  his  father 
and  friends  would  not  be  very  much  alarmed.  Even 
if  he  went  to  the  expense  of  privately  printing  his 
views,  and  of  circulating  seventy-five  copies,  the  re- 
cipients, in  all  probability,  would  wait  and  hope  for 
better  things.  Unfortunately,  Shelley  was  taken 
seriously.  The  authorities  at  Oxford  sent  him  down 
for  a  pamphlet  on  The  Necessity  of  Atheism,  and  in  the 
same  year — 1811 — he  was  married  to  Harriet  West- 
brook,  and  began  a  correspondence  with  William 
Godwin,  the  social  reformer,  a  dangerous  friend  of 
youth. 

The  flames  and  fire  of  nineteen  are  fanned  more 
readily  than  they  are  subdued.  Shelley's  next  few 
months  were  employed  in  putting  Godwin's  precepts  into 
practice  by  an  agitation  in  Ireland.  In  1813  he  had 
the  rare  felicity  of  being  the  victim  of  an  attempted 
assassination,  and,  meanwhile,  he  had  written  his 
philosophical  poem.  Queen  Mob,  from  the  footnotes  to 
which  the  foregoing  citations  were  taken.  Marriage, 
philosophy,  '  assassination ',  sedition,  free  love  and 
atheism  are  a  complex  record  at  one-and-twenty,  and, 
in  Shelley's  station  and  generation,  it  would  have 
required  the  experience  of  many  years  to  undo  the 
errors  of  youth.  The  many  years  were  denied  him. 
In  1822  he  was  drowned  off  Spezzia,  in  Italy,  having 
added  to  his  record  in  the  meantime  an  elopement 
with  Godwin's  daughter,  Mary,  whom  he  married 
in  1816,  after  his  deserted  wife  had  committed  suicide. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY 


129 


This  brief  and  stormy  career,  which  sounds  so  sordid 
in  its  details,  and  so  avoidable  as  to  many  of  its  mis- 
takes, is  saved  from  criticism — and,  therefore,  from 
blame — by  the  mature  sincerity  of  its  hero.  The 
standards  by  which  he  did  evil  are  not  the  standards 
by  which  he  is  to  be  judged.  A  doctrine  of  immunity 
by  genius  is  dangerous  and  misleading,  but  the  fiercest 
examination  of  Shelley's  character  fails  to  reveal  aught 
but  good.  His  opinions  and  his  acts  were  the  con- 
sequence, not  of  selfish  or  vain  desires,  but  of  social 
and  moral  motives  founded  on  reason  and  cherished 
with  passion.  Had  these  led  him  to  penury  and  a 
monastery  instead  of  to  Mary  Godwin  and  literature, 
he  would  have  followed  them  with  equal  loyalty  ; 
and,  apart  from  the  justification  by  character — 
and  Shelley's  purity  and  lovableness  are  afiirmed  by 
portraiture,  both  lineal  and  literary — ,  excuse  and  ex- 
oneration disappear  in  the  contemplation  of  his  poetry. 
The  poet  and  the  man  are  one,  and  these  poems 
of  a  youth  of  nine-and-twenty  are  the  true  Shelley  of 
our  day — not  Harriet's,  or  Mary's,  or  another's.  Let 
Mary  Wollstonecraft  Shelley,  the  clever  author  of 
Frankenstein,  speak  finally  for  her  husband :  '  To 
defecate  life  of  its  misery  and  its  evil ',  she  wrote,  in 
1839,  in  a  preface  to  the  first  collected  edition  of  his 
poems,  '  was  the  ruling  passion  of  his  soul ;  he  dedi- 
cated to  it  every  power  of  his  mind,  every  pulsation  of 
his  heart.  He  looked  on  political  freedom  as  the 
direct  agent  to  effect  the  happiness  of  mankind ;  and 
thus  any  new-sprung  hope  of  liberty  inspired  a  joy  and 
9 


130    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

an  exultation  more  intense  and  wild  than  he  could 
have  felt  for  any  personal  advantage'.  Conversely, 
a  distrust  of  this  hope  was  interpreted  by  him  as 
treachery  to  human  weal.  Thus,  in  1816,  after  Words- 
worth had  built  up  in  The  Excursion  his  ideal  of  social 
reform  by  changes  within,  not  without — '  my  heart 
was  all  given  to  the  People,  and  my  love  was  theirs  ' — , 
and  had  turned  away  from  the  ruined  hopes  of  more 
violent  methods  of  Hberation,  Shelley's  disappointment 
was  expressed  in  a  sonnet  thoughtfully  beautiful, 
which  he  would  doubtless  have  lived  to  regret.  '  Shel- 
ley ',  wrote  his  wife,  '  resembled  Plato ',  in  the  sense 
that  both  took  '  more  delight  in  the  abstract  and  ideal 
than  in  the  special  and  tangible '.  But  he  differed 
from  Plato  in  a  sense  in  which  Wordsworth  was  a 
truer  Platonist,  in  his  consent,  that  is  to  say,  to  take 
the  f/juxporipocv  ohov,  or  the  longer  road  to  truth.  It 
might  almost  seem  that  Wordsworth  foresaw  his  tranquil 
enjoyment  of  many  years  in  which  to  apply  for  man's 
benefit  nature's  equal  design,  and  that  Shelley,  doomed 
to  die  young,  sought  to  justify  artificial  means. 
Shelley  The  quotations  from  Mary  Shelley's  preface  suggest 
Byron.  7®*  another  distinction.  Byron  aimed  at  '  the  special 
and  tangible ',  attaching  his  love  of  liberty  to  concrete 
images  of  freedom,  and  to  Athens  and  Venice  above 
all.  Shelley  approached  it  from  the  intellectual  side. 
'  Come  thou ',  he  apostrophized  Liberty  {Ode,  1820), 
but  lead  out  of  the  inmost  cave 
Of  man's  deep  spirit,  as  the  moming-star 
Beckons  the  sun  from  the  Eoan  Wave, 
Wisdom, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  131 

thus  seeking  to  base  the  reality  on  a  metaphysical 
foundation  ;  and,  in  a  note  to  his  lyrical  drama  Hellas 
(1821),  he  wrote,  '  The  final  chorus  is  indistinct  and 
obscure,  as  the  event  of  the  living  drama  whose  arrival 
it  foretells.  Prophecies  of  wars,  and  rumours  of  wars, 
may  safely  be  made  by  poet  or  prophet  in  any  age, 
but  to  anticipate  however  darkly  a  period  of  regenera- 
tion and  happiness  is  a  more  hazardous  exercise  of  the 
faculty  which  bards  possess  or  feign  '.  Shelley's  poetry 
is  true  to  this  principle.  In  a  note  to  Queen  Mob  he 
declares  that  his  negation  of  a  God  '  must  be  under- 
stood solely  to  affect  a  creative  Deity.  The  hypothesis 
of  a  pervading  spirit  coeternal  with  the  universe  remains 
unshaken ',  and  to  the  elaboration  (or  representation) 
of  this  hypothesis  the  bulk  of  his  poetry  is  devoted  : 

The  awful  shadow  of  some  unseen  Power 
Floats  though  unseen  among  us 

are  the  opening  words  of  his  Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty,  and  the  same  passionate  belief  is  breathed  from 
the  stanzas  of  Adonais,  in  which,  in  1821, Shelley  mourned 
the  death  of  Keats,  whom  he  was  so  soon  to  follow  to 
the  grave  : 

The  One  remains,  the  many  change  and  pass ; 
Heaven's  light  forever  shines,  Earth's  shadows  fly ; 
Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass. 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  Eternity, 
Until  Death  tramples  it  to  fragments  .  .  . 
That  Light  whose  smile  kindles  the  Universe, 
That  Beauty  in  which  all  things  work  and  move, 
That  Benediction  which  the  eclipsing  Curse 
Of  birth  can  quench  not,  that  sustaining  Love 
now  beams  on  me. 


132    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Other  poets  in  later  times  have  proclaimed  their  faith 
in  Unity  under  diversity,  in  the  immortality  of  beauty 
and  love  transcending  the  phantasmagoria  of  experi- 
ence ;  but  none,  like  Shelley,  has  proclaimed  it,  not 
merely  in  his  poetry,  but  in  his  life,  or  has  interpreted 
it  in  matchless  language  while  the  first  down  was  still 
on  his  cheek. 
Diction  It  is  to  the  language  that  we  recur  in  our  appreciation 
rhythm,  of  Shelley  as  a  poet.  He  was  more  analytical  than 
Byron,  whose  ardent  and  lucent  wit  aimed  at  the 
direct  expression  of  the  hopes  that  he  conceived,  and 
subordinated  imagery  to  presentation.  Again  and 
again,  throughout  his  writings,  Shelley,  who  thought  in 
images,  adopted  the  tangential  method,  sliding  away 
from  the  hard,  clear  light  to  follow  the  soft  allurements 
— the  shifting  illumination — of  simile  and  metaphor. 
Read  in  this  spirit  The  Sensitive  Plant,  perhaps  the 
most  typical  of  his  genius  of  all  Shelley's  poems,  and 
his  marvellous  faculty  of  imagination  will  become 
more  apparent.  The  '  young  '  winds  '  feed  '  the  plant, 
which  closes  beneath  the  '  kisses  of  Night '.  Spring 
arose  on  the  garden  '  like  the  Spirit  of  Love  felt  every- 
where '.  The  '  companionless  '  plant  '  trembled  and 
panted '  '  like  a  doe  in  the  noontide  with  love's  sweet 
want ' — an  example  of  image  within  image.  The  breath 
and  scent  of  the  flowers  are  '  like  the  voice  and  the 
instrument '.  The  music  of  the  bells  of  the  hyacinth 
is  '  felt  like  an  odour  within  the  sense  '.  The  rose, 
'  Uke  a  nymph  to  the  bath  addressed ',  lays  bare,  fold 
after  fold,  '  the  soul  of   her  beauty  and  love  '.     We 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  133 

recall  from  the  ode  To  a  Skylark,  the  wonderful  series 
of  likenesses  by  which  the  poet  expresses,  one  by  one, 
the  feelings,  or  suggestions  of  feelings,  stirred  by  that 
music  in  the  sky  :    '  like  a  Poet  hidden  in  the  light  of 
thought ',  '  like  a  high-born  maiden  in  a  palace  tower  ', 
'  like  a  glow-worm  golden  in  a  dell  of  dew  ',  '  like  a  rose 
embowered  in  its  own  green  leaves  ',  and  each  of  the 
images  is  invoked  to  point  a  special  analogy,  so  that 
the  head  of  the  similitudes,  the  blythe  skylark  itself, 
is  endowed  with  a   sum   of   attributes  which  are  yet 
inadequate  to  its  complete  being.     Take,  in  the  same 
connection,  Shelley's  Ode  to  the  West    Wind  and  The 
Cloud,  both  of  which  were  published  in  1820  with  his 
Prometheus  Unbound,  and  consider  the  wealth  of  their 
imagery  and  the  masterful  brilliancy  of  their  personifica- 
tions.    The  silent  powers  and  processes  of  nature  are 
re-created  by  the  insight  of  this  poet,  and  impress  their 
action  on  our  senses.     The  dead  leaves  driven  like 
ghosts  ;    the  sweet  buds  pasturing  in  air  ;    the  Medi- 
terranean roused  from  his  dreams  ;    the  locks  of  the 
approaching  storm  ;    the  vaulted  dome  of  congregated 
vapours  ;    the  sapless  foliage  of  ocean, — Shelley's  art 
makes  nature  expressive  by  the  magic  of  his  words. 
Critics  have  found  in  him,  and  in  Keats,  a  lack  of 
solidity,  of  body ;    his  ethereal  qualities  want  poise, 
and  a  safe  habitation  in  thought.     Unlike  the  skylark 
of  Wordsworth,  which,  through  all  its  wanderings,  was 
'  true  to  the  kindred  points  of  heaven  and  home  ', 
Shelley's  skylark  was  mere  spirit,  'an  unbodied  joy', 
resumed  eternally  in  the  empyrean  ;    and  the  point 


134    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  the  contrast  is  directed  to  the  method  of  the  poets 
as  a  whole. 

The  charge  may  freely  be  admitted,  for  Shelley's 
poetry  was  necessary  to  his  times.  An  abandonment 
to  nature's  impressions,  such  an  abandonment  as 
Shelley's  own  Alastor,  in  one  of  the  earhest  of  his  poems, 
was  designed  to  portray, — 

Every  sight 
And  sound  from  the  vast  earth  and  ambient  air 
Sent  to  his  heart  its  choicest  impulses, — 

was  the  preparation  for  the  message  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  literature.  The  letters  had  to  be  spelt 
over  again,  and  the  old,  false  records  to  be  obliterated, 
in  order  that  poetry  should  interpret  the  meaning  of 
life  to  man,  and  should  justify,  from  the  reading  of 
earth,  the  high  hopes  of  liberty  and  joy  towards  which, 
imperfectly,  and  by  violence,  and  with  many  repulses 
and  misgivings,  the  civilized  peoples  were  advancing. 
Shelley  deliberately  sought  Alastor's  identity  with 
Nature  :  '  Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is ', 
he  besought  the  spirit  of  the  wind  ;  '  I  could  lie  down 
like  a  tired  child,  .  .  .  Till  death,  hke  sleep,  might 
steal  on  me ',  he  wrote  In  Dejection,  near  Naples  ; 
'  Many  a  green  isle  needs  must  be  In  the  deep  wide  sea 
of  Misery ',  he  sang  Among  the  Euganean  Hills,  and, 
haply,  when  the  deep  sea  engulfed  him,  he  found  the 
green  isle  which  he  sought.  Finally,  Shelley  was  a 
musician.  He  combined  his  images  of  nature  in  such 
exquisite  forms  that  the  beauty  of  the  whole  tran- 
scended the  beauty  of  the  parts.     His  longer  poems — 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  135 

the  dramas  of  Prometheus  Unbound,  Hellas  and  The 
Cenci,  the  narratives  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  The  Witch 
of  Atlas,  and  the  rest — are  full  of  passion  and  imagina- 
tion ;  his  songs  and  lyrics  are  pure  music,  a  perfect 
fusion  of  sense  and  sound.  Quotation  is  really  un- 
necessary : 

The  fountains  mingle  with  the  river 
And  the  rivers  with  the  ocean, 

Rarely,  rarely,  comest  thou. 
Spirit  of  Delight ! 

Music,  when  sweet  voices  die. 
Vibrates  in  the  memory. 

0  World  !     0  Life  !     O  Time  ! 
On  whose  last  steps  I  climb. 

One  word  is  too  often  profaned 
For  me  to  profane  it. 

On  a  poet's  lips  I  slept. 
Dreaming  like  a  love-adept, 

— these  poems,  and  others  as  familiar,  have  sung  them- 
selves into  the  consciousness  of  all  who  care  for  litera- 
ture. And,  perhaps,  a  last  word  of  praise  may  be 
given  to  the  less  well-known  sonnet,  Ozymandias,  in 
which  Shelley  captured  the  very  spirit  of  the  desert 

which  he  never  saw  : 

Round  the  decay 
Of  that  colossal  wreck,  boundless  and  bare 
The  lone  and  level  sands  stretch  far  away. 

iii. 

John  Keats  (1795-1821),  the  third  of  the  group,  held,  Keats, 
as  far  as  can  be  judged,  the  most  promise  of  all  three. 


136     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

It  is  partly  because  he  was  the  youngest,  and  partly 
on  account  of  his  obscure  birth — he  was  a  livery- 
stableman's  son  who  was  apprenticed  to  a  surgeon- 
apothecary — ,  and  partly,  again,  because  of  his  ceaseless 
struggle  with  ill-health,  that  we  are  constantly  reminded 
of  the  greater  things  he  might  have  done.  There  is 
less  maturity  in  his  work  than  in  that  of  the  other  two. 
Except  for  a  few  odes  and  sonnets — immortal,  however 
few — ,  there  is  always  a  sense  of  beginning,  or,  at 
least,  of  adolescence.  The  summer  summons  us  from 
the  spring,  but,  like  the  call  of  the  cuckoo,  '  still  longed 
for,  never  seen ',  it  mocks  us  from  the  further  hill. 
The  biographers  of  Keats,  who  are  as  many,  almost, 
as  his  years,  preserve  one  anecdote  at  least  which  it  is 
pleasant  to  recall.  He  had  gone  to  school  at  Enfield, 
and  Charles  Cowden-Clarke  (1787-1877),  the  poet's 
senior  by  eight  years  and  his  survivor  by  more  than 
half  a  century,  was  his  schoolmaster's  son.  Clarke, 
who  became  well  known  as  a  Shakespearean  scholar, 
was  the  first  to  introduce  Keats  to  the  two  worlds — the 
Elizabethan  and  the  Greek — in  which,  through  the  rest 
of  his  life,  he  found  himself  most  at  home.  In  1811,  or 
thereabouts,  he  lent  him  a  volume  of  The  Faerie  Queen, 
and  Spenser,  '  the  poet's  poet ',  as  Charles  Lamb  aptly 
called  him,  never  had  a  more  poetic  reader,  in  the  sense 
of  Carlyle's  epigram,  '  we  are  all  poets  when  we  read  a 
poem  well'.  Keats  went  through  the  volume,  says 
Clarke,  '  as  a  young  horse  through  a  spring  meadow, 
ramping  '.  He  picked  out  the  happiest  epithets,  the 
deftest  Spenserian  touches,  and  learnt  them,  literally, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  137 

by  heart.  '  What  an  image  that  is  ',  he  exclaimed, 
looking  burly  and  dominant,  '  sea-shouldering  whales  '  ! 
A  year  or  two  afterwards,  Clarke  lent  him  a  copy  of 
Chapman's  Homer,  and  Keats  himself  has  left  on  record 
his  first  impressions  of  that  book.  The  sonnet,  his 
mentor  tells  us,  was  laid  on  the  breakfast-table  on  the 
morrow  of  the  introduction  : 

Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken ; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise. 

Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien, 

Many  books  are  a  great  boon,  and  much  verse  has 
flowed  from  their  plenty  ;  but  literature  counts  no 
purer  triumph  than  the  inspiration  of  Keats  by  these 
stray  copies  of  Chapman  and  of  Spenser. 

His  recourse  to  poetry  was  inevitable.  Elizabethan 
and  Greek  were  in  his  blood,  and  his  invocation  of  the 
muse  was  published  in  1817.  Leigh  Hunt,  ruralizing 
at  Hampstead,  was  his  host  and  hero  at  that  time,  and 
Hunt's  cheerful  and  easy  sciolism  encouraged  the  eager 
young  poet.  For  sometimes  an  angel  rushes  in  where 
wise  men  fear  to  tread.  Slee'p  and  Poetry  was  written  Slezp  and 
in  heroic  couplets,  with  all  the  aids  of  paragraphs 
and  pauses  by  which  Pope's  detractors  were  relaxing 
the  metre  which  they  hesitated  to  abandon,  and  it  ran 
to  four  hundred  and  four  lines.  Remembering  Words- 
worth's Prelude — his  invocation  to  poetry  in  thirteen 
books,  begun  in  1805,  finished  in  1832,  and  not  published 


138    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

till  1850 — ,  it  is  difficult  not  to  wonder  how  Keats  would 

have  regarded  Sleep  and  Poetry  from  the  standard,  say, 

of  middle  life.     His  '  young  spirit '  was  to  '  follow  The 

morning  sun-beams  to  the  great  Apollo  ',  with  all  The 

luxury  of  the  weak  termination.     In  the   '  elysium ' 

of  '  a  bowery  nook '  he  was  to  copy  from  '  an  eternal 

book' 

Many  a  lovely  saying 
About  the  leaves  and  flowers — about  the  playing 
Of  nymphs  in  woods,  and  fountains ;  and  the  shade 
Keeping  a  silence  round  a  sleeping  maid. 

In  that  '  happy  silence  '  he  was  to  '  wander  .  .  .  hke 
the  clear  Meander ',  and,  '  like  a  strong  giant ',  he 
was  to  seize  '  the  events  of  this  wide  world  '.  '  0  f or 
ten  years  ',  he  prayed,  '  that  I  may  overwhelm  Myself 
in  poetry  ',  but  foreshortening  fate  hardly  rendered  him 
the  half.  We  remember  this  as  we  note  how  this  en- 
thusiasm for  the  seventeenth-century  recoiled  suddenly 
from  its  successor,  or,  more  exactly,  how  his  love  of 
Spenser  brought  a  hate  of  Pope.  Lyrical  Ballads  had 
mastered  him,  and  Wordsworth's  poems  of  1807.  The 
formal  influence  of  Wordsworth  is  strong  in  the  middle 
of  this  poem,  where  Keats  jeered  at  the  '  dismal-soul'd 
bards  ',  for  whom  '  the  winds  of  heaven  blew,  the 
ocean  roU'd  Its  gathering  waves  ',  and  '  the  blue  Bared 
its  eternal  bosom  '  in  vain.  '  Beauty  was  awake  ',  he 
declaimed,  but '  ye  were  dead  to  things  ye  knew  not  of ' : 

Easy  was  the  task ; 
A  thousand  handicraftsmen  wore  the  mask 
Of  Poesy.     Ill-fated,  impious  race  ! 
That  blasphemed  the  bright  Ljn^t  to  his  face, 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  139 

And  did  not  know  it, — no,  they  went  about. 
Holding  a  poor,  decrepid  standard  out 
Mark'd  with  most  flimsy  mottoa,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau  ! 

Boileau  (1636-1711),  the  French  inventor  of  classical 
counsels  for  poets,  though  Professor  Saintsbury  {History 
of  Criticism,  ii.  289)  finds  the  counsels  '  simply  nega- 
tive ',  the  doctrine  '  usually  wrong  ',  and  the  sum  of 
help  '  meagre  and  disappointing  ' — thereby  justifying 
'  Keats,  and  the  men  of  1830  '  whom  he  anticipated — , 
was  the  idol  of  Pope  in  poetics  ;  and  thus  Keats  in 
these  verses  threw  down  a  gage  of  defiance  : 

And  they  shaU  be  accounted  poet-Kings 
Who  simply  tell  the  most  heart-easing  things. 

Therefore  should  I 
Be  but  the  essence  of  deformity, 
A  coward,  did  my  very  eye-lids  wink 
At  speaking  out  what  I  have  dared  to  think. 

The  gage  was  quickly  taken  up.  Byron,  who  admired 
Pope,  and  who  therefore  somewhat  perversely  ranged 
himself  on  the  side  of  the  eighteenth- century,  and  shut 
his  eyes  to  the  new  era  inaugurated  by  Lyrical  Ballads, 
attacked  this  poem  in  Blackwood'' s  Magazine  as  '  the 
work  of  a  young  person  learning  to  write  poetry,  and 
beginning  by  teaching  the  art ' — which,  on  the  whole, 
was  not  unfair.  He  went  on  to  designate  Keats  '  a 
tadpole  of  the  Lakes  ',  but  admitted,  in  1821,  when  the 
younger  poet  was  dead,  that  his  indignation  for  Pope's 
sake  had  rendered  him  less  than  just  to  Keats's  own 
'  genius.  .  .  .  His  Fragment  of  Hyperion  is  as  sublime 
as  iEschylus  '.     There  were  others  who  hailed  the  new 


140    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

poet  in  terms  of  extravagant  praise.  Hunt,  trans- 
ferring to  The  Examiner  his  hospitality  at  Hampstead, 
naturally  justified  his  disciple,  and  Benjamin  Haydon, 
the  painter,  to  whom  Keats  had  inscribed  two  sonnets, 
compared  Sleep  and  Poetry  to  a  flash  of  lightning 
heralding  the  thunder's  crash.  Here,  then,  we  may 
leave  the  matter.  The  disputes  of  critics  and  reviewers 
of  a  hundred  years  ago  are  an  endless  and  unfruitful 
topic,  the  interest  of  which  has  been  much  exaggerated. 
It  is  enough  in  this  place  to  note,  first,  that  the  weightier 
reviews  were  adverse,  on  the  whole,  to  the  reactionary 
(or  romantic)  poets,  and,  secondly,  that  it  is  untrue 
that  Keats  was  killed  by  his  critics,  in  the  sense  that 
their  unkindness  hastened  or  caused  his  decline.  Keats 
died  of  consumption,  and,  probably,  of  want  of  proper 
nourishment,  and  his  disease  followed  a  normal  course, 
as  its  treatment  was  understood  in  those  days,  through 
periods  of  high  and  low  spirits.  From  his  published 
letters  it  would  seem  that,  when  health  permitted,  he 
accepted  criticism  in  good  part.  Thus  he  wrote  in 
1818,  '  Praise  or  blame  has  but  a  momentary  effect  on 
a  man  whose  love  of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes  him 
a  severe  critic  on  his  own  works.  ...  I  was  never 
afraid  of  failure  ;  for  I  would  rather  fail  than  not  be 
among  the  greatest '. 
Aims  and  This  was  a  more  stable  aim,  a  more  modest  ambition  of 
ments.  genius,  than  to  '  follow  Apollo  '  and  to  '  wander  like 
Meander '  ;  and  we  turn  to  his  latest  work,  by  which 
he  would  wish  to  be  judged,  for  the  signs  of  fulfilment. 
The  Fall  of  Hyperion,  a  Vision,  was  not  published  till 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  141 

after  his  death.  He  had  worked  at  it  during  his  last 
months,  intending  it  to  replace  the  broken  fragment 
of  Hyperion  which  he  had  '  given  up  '  two  years  before. 
Precisely  why  he  gave  it  up  is  a  little  uncertain,  nor  is 
it  altogether  to  be  determined  out  of  the  unfinished 
re-cast  version.  For  death  had  laid  its  hand  upon  him  ; 
the  '  warm  love  '  was  slipping  away  for  which  he  set 
his  'casement  ope  at  night'.  Hyperion  had  been 
written  under  Milton's  influence — Keats  was  always 
young  enough  to  be  rapt — ;  and  he  seems  to  have 
become  dissatisfied  with  the  restraints  which  the  Milton- 
ism  imposed.  It  would  appear,  then,  that  he  was 
feeling  his  way  towards  a  freer  self-expression  when 
he  turned  the  narrative  into  a  vision.  However  this 
may  be,  Keats  dwelt,  alike  in  Hyperion  and  in  The  Fall, 
on  the  excellence  of  poetry  and  the  high  mission  of  a 
poet.     Every  man  has  the  vision  within  him  : 

Fanatics  have  their  dreams,  wherewith  they  weave 
A  paradise  for  a  sect ;  the  savage,  too. 
From  forth  the  loftiest  fashion  of  his  sleep 
Guesses  at  heaven.  The  Fall  of  Hyperion,  [i.]  1-4. 

At  one  level  or  another,  the  fanatic's,  the  savage's,  or 
the  poet's,  heaven  is  in  each  man's  ken.  But  '  Poesy 
alone  can  tell  her  dreams ',  and  it  is  the  poet's  privilege 
to  employ  imagination  upon  experience.  The  mere 
dreamer,  wandering  in  the  gardens  of  enchantment, 
'  among  the  leaves  and  flowers  '  of  Keats's  poem  of  1817, 
fell  short  of  the  powers  of  his  kind.  For  '  the  Poet  and 
the  dreamer  are  distinct,  diverse,  sheer  opposite'. 
The  dreamer  abides  in  his  fancies — in  his  '  elysium  ', 


142    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

we  may  add,  of  the  earlier  poem — and  '  vexes  '  the  world 

by  inefEective  and  will-o'-the-wisp  reports.     The  Poet 

'  pours  out  a  balm  upon  the  World  ',  returning  to  it,  like 

a  seer  inspired,  to  reconstruct  its  phenomena  by  the 

pattern  of  the  permanent  design.     The  argument  is 

somewhat  obscure,  and  it  has  to  be  built  up  out  of 

manuscript  fragments  of  the  incomplete  poem  ^ ;   but, 

plainly,  it  reveals  the  dying  poet's  deeper  insight  into 

his  vision  of  five  years  before, 

Then  the  events  of  this  wide  world  I'd  seize, 
Like  a  strong  giant,  and  my  spirit  tease 
Till  at  its  shoulders  it  should  proudly  see 
Wings  to  find  out  an  immortality. 

Sleep  and  Poetry,  81-84. 

The  '  ten  years  '  he  had  asked  for  were  refused.  Already 
in  the  fifth  he  was  aware  that  '  the  car  is  fled  Into  the 
light  of  heaven  '.  Faithfully  to  his  promise,  he  had 
striven  to  '  keep  alive  The  thought  of  that  same  chariot, 
and  the  strange  Journey  it  went '  ;  and  now,  though  the 
strength  of  the  '  giant '  was  brought  low  by  bodily 
suffering  and  mental  anguish. 

There  grew 
A  power  within  me  of  enormous  ken 
To  see  as  a  god  sees,  and  take  the  depth 
Of  things  as  nimbly  as  the  outward  eye 
Can  size  and  shape  pervade. 

The  Fail  of  Hyperion,  [i.]  279-82. 

This,  too,  was  Hyperion's  ambition  in  the  relinquished 
poem  : 

*  The  material  is  supplied  in  Mr.  E.  de  Sdlincourt's  valuable 
annotation  to  The  Fall  of  Hyperion,  in  his  The  Poems  of  John  Keala, 
Methuen,  1905  (pp.  515-19). 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  143 

For  to  bear  all  naked  truths. 
And  to  envisage  circumstance,  all  calm. 
That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty. 

Hyperion,  ii.  202-5. 

It  is  from  this  passion  of  faith  that  Keats's  mortal  fate 
appeals. 

Far  more  consciously  than  Shelley,  though  with  less 
help  from  his  training  and  associates,  Keats  aimed,  if 
words  so  harsh  may  be  applied  to  thought  so  melodious, 
at  a  transcendental  synthesis  of  experience.  He  sought 
always,  untaught  as  he  was,  without  sympathy,  and 
weak  with  pain,  the  reality  behind  the  seeming.  Men 
looked  out  on  life,  he  would  have  said,  at  the  worst, 
through  veils  of  convention,  at  the  best,  through  windows 
limiting  the  view.  For  him,  the  beauty  of  the  universe 
lay  behind  the  window  and  the  veil,  and  his  poems  are 
interpenetrated  with  the  gleams  of  it,  revealed.  His 
song,  like  that  of  his  own  nightingale,  was  to  charm 

Magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam, 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn, 

and  to  regain  the  lost  paradise  of  true  being.  He 
sought  expression  where  he  found  it.  From  Greece, 
from  the  Middle  Ages,  from  the  seventeenth-century, 
he  drew  the  power  of  self-expression,  the  right  of  a  free 
man  to  be  free,  and,  through  enjoyment  of  the  beauties 
of  creation,  to  pierce  to  the  Creator's  design.  He  did 
not  live  long  enough — despite  all  the  wonder  that  he 
wrought — to  strike  his  own  note  thoroughly,  and  to 
throw  off  his  allegiance  to  the  Greeks,  to  Spenser, 
Shakespeare,   Wordsworth,   Milton.     His  soul  was   so 


144    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

much  attuned  to  beauty  that  works  of  beauty  over- 
whelmed him.  But  more  completely  than  Shelley,  and 
far  more  completely  than  Byron,  he  was  detached  from 
party  and  from  polemics.  If  these  cared  for  truth  and 
beauty  first,  Keats  cared  for  them  absolutely,  and, 
caring  so  much,  he  achieved,  in  some  of  his  shorter 
poems,  a  mature  and  an  original  note.  His  odes  On  a 
Grecian  Urn,  To  a  Nightingale  and  To  Autumn,  among 
others,  and  several  of  his  sonnets,  are  great  without 
deduction  or  detraction.  In  his  poems  on  medieval 
themes,  such  as  Isabella,  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes, 
and,  most  notably,  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,  he 
captured  the  very  spirit  of  romance,  and  surpassed 
Coleridge  in  his  own  line.  The  longer  poems, 
Endymion,  Lamia,  Hyperion,  have  more  elusive 
qualities  of  beauty.  They  are  filled  with  poetic  imagina- 
tion, overflowing  in  places  and  uncontrolled,  and,  alike 
in  metre  and  in  language,  they  poured  their  influence 
on  later  poets,  and  on  Tennyson  above  all.  In  this 
sense,  Keats,  like  his  loved  Spenser,  may  be  entitled 
a  poets'  poet.  But  he  became  the  people's  poet, 
too,  by  virtue  of  his  shorter  poems  and  of  their  many 
deathless  phrases.  To  Keats,  finally,  we  may  apply 
the  conclusion  of  a  sonnet  of  his  own — 

And  calmest  thoughts  come  round  us — as  of  leaves 
Budding — fruit  ripening  in  stillness — autumn  suns 

Smiling  at  eve  upon  the  quiet  sheaves — 

Sweet  Sappho's  cheek — a  sleeping  infant's  breath — 
The  gradual  sand  that  through  an  hourglass  runs — 

A  woodland  rivulet — a  Poet's  death. 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  145 


IV. 


Of  (James  Henry)  Leigh  Hunt  (1784-1859),  Bryan  other 
Procter  (1787-1874),  who  wrote  under  the  name  of  ^°®*^- 
'Barry  Cornwall',  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere  (1788-1846), 
Henry  Kirke  White  (1785-1806),  James  Montgomery 
(1771-1854),  William  Lisle  Bowles  (1762-1850),  Joanna 
Baillie  (1762-1851),  Hartley  Coleridge  (1796-1849), 
Felicia  Hemans  (1793-1835),  and  other  stars,  great  and 
small,  which  shone  in  the  firmament  of  letters  between, 
say,  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
say  much.  They  filled  their  parts  and  had  their  day, 
and  criticism  is  not  unfriendly  if  it  recall  some  of  these 
names  in  another  connection  than  of  poetry.  Hunt, 
for  example,  is  remembered  as  the  chief  of  the  '  Cockney 
School ' — ^the  cock  of  the  Cockneys,  so  to  speak — ,  the 
name  given  by  Lockhart,  in  Blackwood's  Magazine,  to 
the  London  supporters  of  the  '  Lakists  ',  on  account  of 
their  town  tastes  and  alleged  vulgarity.  It  is  all  very 
dead  to-day,  though  Hunt,  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
had  frequent  lapses  from  good  form.  At  the  same  time, 
it  was  in  even  worse  form  to  build  criticism  on  an 
imputation  of  low  birth,  and  Haydon,  '  the  Cockney 
Raphael ',  HazHtt,  '  the  Cockney  Aristotle  ',  Keats, 
Lamb,  Barry  Cornwall,  and  the  rest,  have  long  since 
forgotten  this  dispraise.  Bowles,  a  writer  of  '  sonnets 
on  picturesque  spots  ',  a  year  or  two  before  Lyrical 
Ballads,  may  now  forgive  the  debt  which  Coleridge  is 
stated  to  have  owed  him  ;   his  more  memorable  claim 


146    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

is  an  edition  of  Pope,  whence  arose,  about  1807,  the 
dispute  as  to  Pope  as  a  poet.  The  reaction  was  favour- 
able to  a  controversy,  the  embers  of  which  are  still 
aglow.  Hartley  Coleridge  was  the  son  of  a  poet,  and 
de  Vere  became  a  poet's  father.  Felicia  Hemans 
(1793-1835),  with  whom,  perhaps,  we  may  join  Reginald 
Heber  (1783-1826),  the  hymn-writer,andLetitiaLandon, 
represent  what  the  Germans  call  an  '  iiberwundener 
Standpunkt ',  or  a  somewhat  antiquated  point  of  view — 
the  point  of  view  of  sublimated  tenderness.  Joanna 
Baillie,  who  wrote  plays,  and  Henry  Cary,  the  trans- 
lator, must  not  be  permitted  to  detain  us.  To  George 
Darley  (1795-1846)  and  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes 
(1803-49)  reference  will  be  made  later  on,  for  they  seem 
to  belong  more  definitely  to  the  next  poetic  cycle. 
Thomas  The  last  word  here  is  due  to  Thomas  Moore  (1779- 
1852),  friend  and  biographer  of  Byron,  and  an  excellent 
writer  in  the  second  class.  He  was  an  Irishman  by 
birth,  and  the  author  of  Irish  Melodies  which  are,  if 
anything,  too  melodious — too  mellifluous,  or  sweet- 
flowing,  that  is  to  say,  for  the  taste  of  a  country  and  of 
a  generation  which  is,  perhaps,  more  thoughtful  than 
musical.  By  his  long  poem  Lalla  RooJch,  published  in 
1817,  he  rose  to  considerable  popularity  on  the  crest  of 
Byron's  wave,  and  he  was  brilhant,  too,  in  pohtical 
satire — the  least  enduring  form  of  verse.  The  Twopenny 
Post  Bag  and  The  Fudge  Family  are  his  best-known 
pieces  in  this  kind.  But  his  poetry,  though  lower  than 
the  highest,  has  fine  qualities  of  its  own.  Many  of  his 
songs  are  as  touching — as  permanently  touching — as 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  147 

they  are  familiar.  '  0,  breathe  not  his  name  ;  let  it 
sleep  in  the  shade  ' — '  The  harp  that  once  through 
Tara's  halls  ' — '  She  is  far  from  the  land  where  her 
young  hero  sleeps  ' — '  'Tis  the  last  rose  of  summer 
left  blooming  alone  ' — '  I  saw  from  the  beach,  when 
the  morning  was  shining  ' — '  Dear  Harp  of  my  Country  ! 
in  darkness  I  found  thee  ' — these  and  others  our  grand- 
fathers sang,  and  our  grandchildren  are  likely  to  sing 
them. 


This  long  section  must  come  to  a  close,  and  with  it,  Conclu- 
perhaps,  a  partial  conclusion  of  the  present  book  may  ^^°"" 
be  essayed.     It  can,  at  the  best,  be  only  partial,  since 
but  a  part  of  the  century  has  been  completed. 

It  is  the  first  part  in  time  and  in  importance.  An 
immense  force  had  been  at  work  in  social  dynamics. 
The  power  of  the  French  Revolution  extended  in  several 
directions  beyond  its  poUtical  scope.  It  was  at  once 
the  cause  and  the  effect — or,  rather,  the  accompanying 
sign — of  deep  and  far-reaching  changes  in  many  depart- 
ments of  life.  It  would  take  us  too  far  from  our  special 
department  of  English  letters  to  pursue  these  in  detail. 
The  foregoing  sections  have  referred  to  them,  as 
they  seemed  chiefly  to  occur.  There  was  a  general 
opening-out  and  breaking-down — in  certain  instances,  a 
'  breaking-out '  as  well.  The  neglected  countryside  was 
revisited.  The  timid  notes  of  Collins  and  Gray,  the 
tender  difl&dence  of  Cowper,  and  Goldsmith's  '  country 


148    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

excursions '  were  for  ever  swept  away  on  the  almost 
interminable  stream  of  Wordsworth's  musings  in  his 
Excursion.  Burns's  songs  of  the  soil,  Scott's  ballads 
and  romances,  John  Wilson  and  '  the  Ettrick  Shepherd ', 
and  the  rest  of  the  company  of  '  Maga ',  destroyed  the 
illusion  of  the  North  fostered  in  the  dictatorship  of  Dr. 
Johnson,  Actually,  they  did  more  than  this.  They 
proved  a  positive,  as  well  as  negatives.  They  estab- 
lished principles  in  poetry  and  precedents  in  fiction 
which  succeeding  periods  were  to  apply.  Scott,  Jane 
Austen,  and  Maria  Edgeworth  founded  the  use  of  the 
novel ;  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Keats  laid  down  the  lines 
for  future  poets. 

A  third  great  invention  of  the  era  was  the  periodical 
press.  The  Times,  The  Morning  Post,  and  other  news- 
papers ;  The  Edinburgh,  The  Quarterly,  and  other 
reviews,  all  had  their  beginning  at  this  time.  Writers 
like  Lamb,  Hunt  and  De  Quincey  were  attached  to 
special  papers,  and  were  associated  with  special  schools 
of  taste.  Drama  languished  in  obscurity ;  James 
Sheridan  Knowles  (1784-1862)  was  the  only  playwright 
of  any  note,  and  his  work  is  mainly  subsequent  to  the 
date  which  we  have  taken  as  closing  the  first  period. 
But  with  this  sole  exception,  men  of  letters  were  more 
active  and  literature  reached  a  higher  level  than  at 
any  time  since  the  Elizabethan.  And  on  every  side 
it  aimed  at  liberation.  The  metres  of  poets  were 
emancipated  by  Byron's  daring  experiments,  by 
Shelley's  musical  numbers,  and  by  the  liquid  prosody 
of  Keats,  to  name  but  three  writers  out  of  many.     The 


IMAGINATIVE  POETRY  149 

matter  of  poetry  and  prose  was  enlarged  to  include  all 
subjects  and  all  kinds  and  conditions  of  men. 

A  reference  to  older  standards  is  helpful  at  this  point. 
George  Puttenham,  author  of  an  Art  of  Poetry  published 
in  1589,  set  on  record  the  notable  judgments  that 
'  the  actions  of  mean  and  base  personages  tend  in  very 
few  cases  to  any  great  good  example  '  ;  that  '  there- 
fore was  nothing  committed  to  history  but  matters 
of  great  and  excellent  persons  and  things  ',  and  that 
the  geographical  area  of  literary  England  was  bounded 
by  '  London  and  the  shires  lying  about  London,  within 
sixty  miles,  and  not  much  above  '.  The  Revolution 
of  1789 — exactly  two  hundred  years  later — and  the 
natural  development  of  social  and  moral  ideals,  brought 
about  a  revision  of  these  statements.  The  sixty-mile 
radius  was  extended  beyond  the  power  of  computation. 
'  Great  and  excellent  persons  '  were  giving  way  to 
the  '  mean  and  base  ',  in  whose  lives  romance  and 
imagination  discovered  '  good  example '  enough.  This, 
generally,  is  the  effect  which  a  review  of  the  period 
impresses. 

The  work  of  the  pioneers  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  complete  before  1832.  Lamb,  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, De  Quincey,  Landor,  Moore,  Southey,  Campbell, 
Rogers,  and  many  others  survived  Scott's  death,  but 
literature  counts  little  wanting  to  the  splendid  heritage 
at  that  date  save  the  mature  gifts  of  Byron,  Shelley 
and  Keats.  A  kind  of  pause  now  ensued,  a  less 
ardent  and  eager  phase,  in  which  the  writers  of  the 
transition  were  more  ready  to  enjoy  than  to  invent. 


150    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  bulk  of  their  possessions  was  overwhelming,  and, 
with  certain  exceptions  and  harkings-back,  and  under 
a  duller  sky  of  politics,  men  of  letters  seemed  to  wait 
awhile  in  order  to  test  and  prove  their  new  resources. 
Conclusions  were  examined  and  applied  ;  forms  were 
moulded  more  closely  to  material ;  narrower  paths  of 
adventure  were  followed  up  beneath  the  light  of  single 
stars  ;  and  a  second  harvest  was  growing  ripe  mean- 
time.    So  our  summary  leads  to  a  fresh  beginning. 


w 


BOOK   II 

THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832 


E  reach  a  time  of  great  difficulty,  though  of  even  Some 
greater  interest.     The  clues  are  confusing  and  threads. 


the  threads  hard  to  unravel.  It  is  a  time  of  young 
men's  opportunities,  tempered  by  indecisive  fears, 
and  of  old  men's  surrender  of  a  stage  where  the  scene 
has  been  changed.  It  is  a  time  when  dead  men  are 
missed  for  the  great  things  they  might  have  done,  and 
when  men  in  the  prime  of  Hfe  are  cut  off  before  their 
fulfilment.  Above  all,  it  is  a  time  of  shifting  standards. 
Rousseau's  aim  at  moral  simplification  had  ruled,  by 
interaction  and  analogy,  the  literature  of  the  last 
generation.  It  had  appealed  to  conduct  through 
sentiment.  The  spiritual  universe  had  been  enlarged  ; 
nature,  idealized  by  imagination,  had  been  explored 
for  the  consolation  of  mankind.  Poets,  noveHsts, 
historians,  and  philosophers  in  motley  had  trooped 
through  the  ivory  gate.  Passion  applied  to  contem- 
plation had  raised  consciousness  to  insight. 
The  desire  to  be,  led  to  a  knowledge  of  being.     This 


152     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

is  the  important  point.  There  was  a  kind  of  irony 
in  the  manner  in  which  the  courage  of  the  age  was 
turned  against  itself.  The  fearless  attack  on  traditions, 
on  principles  which  had  ranked  as  sacred  and  on  con- 
ventions which  it  had  been  folly  to  oppose — the  invasion 
of  reason  by  emotion — let  loose  larger  forces  than 
it  could  control.  The  spirit  of  investigation  was 
released  ;  the  positive  spirit  and  the  scientific  method. 
If  the  ideal  was  to  be  grasped  for  use,  it  must  be  founded 
on  a  basis  of  the  real.  The  poets,  as  creators,  must 
defer  to  the  craftsmen  of  applied  arts.  The  centre 
of  activity  was  moved  from  the  trustees  of  pure  litera- 
ture to  politicians,  legislators,  and  men  of  science. 
Knowledge  became  the  main  quest  of  a  time  intent  on 
social  reform.  Knowledge,  with  whatever  reservations 
on  the  part  of  the  heirs  of  Keats,  was  for  the  next  few 
years  the  predominant  concern  of  all  classes,  and  writers 
otherwise  as  diverse  as  Tennyson  (in  his  first  period), 
Carlyle,  Macaulay,  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Beddoes,  Edward 
Bulwer  (Lord  Lytton),  and  a  host  of  lesser  men,  became 
disciples  of  the  new  creed. 

We  shall  come  to  the  evidence  later  on.  Here, 
assuming  confirmation,  a  few  conclusions  may  be 
essayed.  In  such  a  period  as  we  are  describing  there 
will  be  both  reaction  and  advance.  Reaction,  lacking 
the  stimulus  of  contact  with  life,  will  be  marked,  in 
the  literary  sphere,  by  an  exaggeration  of  formal 
features.  Literature,  thrown  back  on  its  own  re- 
sources, will  appeal,  less  to  the  sympathy  between  a 
writer  and  his  readers,  than  to  powers  of  emphasis 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         153 

and  insistence,  to  a  bizarreness  of  manner,  or  a  volup- 
tuousness of  beauty,  or  a  strangeness  of  material.  It 
will  be  driven  to  arrest  attention,  since  it  ceases  to 
command  it.  On  the  other  hand,  advance  will  be 
marked  by  a  certain  hardening  of  the  intellect,  a  metallic 
quality  of  the  mind.  The  pioneers  of  knowledge, 
like  the  bridegroom,  will  go  forth  rejoicing  in  their 
might.  They  will  be  less  disposed  than  at  a  time 
when  imagination  is  held  in  honour  to  make  allowance 
for  the  fallibility  of  dogma.  And,  between  the  two, 
there  will  be  found  at  least  two  classes  of  neutral 
writers.  There  will  be  those  who  strive  at  a  compro- 
mise, and  those  who  reject  both  courses.  The  one  class 
will  be  known  by  its  inconclusiveness,  and  the  other  by 
its  seclusion  ;  and  these,  too,  are  represented  in  this  age. 

It  is  essential  to  the  understanding,  not  merely  of  the 
present  period  but  of  the  next,  to  seize  the  value  of 
these  distinctions.  They  explain  the  decay  of  poetry 
in  the  years  after  Byron's  death  ;  the  rapid  rise  of  the 
novel  as  the  vessel  through  which  the  positive  vision 
of  the  new  thinkers  was  poured  ;  the  theological  unrest 
which  produced  the  High  Church  and  the  Broad  Church 
movements  ;  the  corresponding  movements  in  literature, 
typified,  at  their  extremes  by,  say,  Rossetti  and  Charles 
Kingsley  ;  and  the  varying  wilhngness  and  reluctance 
among  writers  of  the  next  sixty  years  to  include  in 
their  survey  the  results  of  scientific  observation. 

There  was  one  man,  and  one  man  only,  who,  while 
the  age  was  yet  young,  rose  to  the  height  of  its  inspira- 
tion.    Others,  had   they  lived,  might  have  scaled  it. 


154     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Byron,  especially,  occurs  to  the  memory.  But,  dealing 
with  things  as  they  are,  and  reserving  this  sole  ex- 
ception— the  Scotsman,  Thomas  Carlyle — for  separate 
treatment  later  on,  an  attempt  may  now  be  made 
to  arrange  the  contents  of  the  present  section  in  some 
kind  of  tabulated  order  (see  p.  155).  It  is  well  to  see 
names  and  facts  in  close  juxtaposition  before  trying 
to  distinguish  the  strands.  They  may  be  grouped 
as  symbols  of  progress  and  decay  (or  suspense).  The 
progress  in  literature  is  single,  and  corresponds  to  a 
definite  progress  in  social  life  and  other  arts.  The  sus- 
pense, to  be  accurate,  is  in  three  sorts :  (i)  the  decadence 
of  writers  who  veered  between  reaction  and  advance — 
twilight  writers,  so  to  say  ;  (ii)  the  suspense  of  writers 
who  retired  to  undisturbed  pastures,  and  (iii)  the  decay 
of  the  dead — the  more  deeply  deplored,  as  criticism 
grows  more  familiar  with  the  writers  who  filled  their 
places. 


11. 

Omitting  for  the  present  Carlyle,  and  noting  the 
signs  of  the  times  in  Lyell's  Elements  of  Geology,  which 
broke  down  the  tradition  of  Genesis,  in  Turner's  release 
of  nature  from  the  conventions  of  art-schools,  and  in 
such  obvious  instances  as  the  Reform  Act  of  1832,  which 
enlarged  the  power  of  the  middle-classes,  and  in  the 
industry  of  publishers  catering  for  popular  taste — 
Charles  Knight  (1791-1873)  and  William  (1800-1883) 
and  Robert   (1802-1871)  Chambers — ,   we   may  seek 


•>l  S'  OS  C  5^ 

gen?  r'uQ  § 


I  tdoggr 


3  "^  S     =2  2  S  i 


ooo  SL 


g-         §    S,  !<-  SS  S 

1-)  Ei  *5  CO  o  r 


1^  '■^ 


^d    CD  (^ 

Rj  -r  tn  ^ 


-<    Co    CO  ti 
*   CO  _^ 


ST  ° 
20R 


O 

o 

a 
o 
w 

Hi 

a 

H 

k! 
> 

00 


H 
W 

o 

H 


3^     CD 


O   CO 

o 

(S   p 

►-<    IB 


hS     *  P 

p  hi  W  " 

•^  &,p  o 


3t  Ct        -^ 


o  SL 

>-hP 
'O    00 


CD     Oi 


o  »  o  S 


3  §§  g 

CD 


S  ^ 

_ -a 

Oco 

05  CD 

««  p 

g.  IS 


00  00 

M  M  Oj  t—  to 

^  ^O    00  05 


CO 

n  o   O  —  H 
a  2  3 


*^  00  rt'^ 

?>    O  •    13 


>      ^      &3      Q 


■a     UU  O   CD 

?>  00       '^v 


1-1   Oi  Ph 


P'  P'  Cb 


W  to 

o  g. 

Ct> 


^  • 

-a 

00 

-    d 

1— .  1-1 

§  » 
n.cn 


CO 
CD 

O-  O    '^  P  ^ 


■  ^    s 

'-'^  CO  P    CD 
'"    "  CD    o' 


lO    j» 


p  ^ 


00      I 


H  1-1 
p  ^ 


2§^ 


^s 


p      s  a 


tufa's-: 

CD    ^•~»- 

3,0  55 

3  S. 
.  o 
eg     «a 


*5S 


156     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Macaulay,  in  the  early  writings  of  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay 

Essays         t  •  r    •, 

and  Lays,  for  a  picture  of  the  age.  Macaulay,  son  of  an  abolitionist 
when  the  British  slave-trade  was  flourishing,  was  at 
this  time  a  barrister  at  Gray's  Inn,  and  eked  out  his 
income  from  the  law  by  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review.  He  entered  the  House  of  Commons  in  1830, 
and  quickly  made  his  mark  on  the  Liberal  side,  especially 
in  connection  with  Indian  politics.  He  was  the  author 
of  the  existing  Copyright  Act,  and  served  the  Govern- 
ment as  Secretary  of  War.  In  1857  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage,  and  two  years  later,  when  he  died, 
he  was  buried  in  the  Abbey.  It  was  a  consistent  and 
brilliant  career,  and,  turning  to  the  first  of  his  essays 
in  the  Edinburgh  Review — the  John  Milton  of  1825 — we 
are  at  once  aware  of  the  practical  positive  spirit  which 
was  to  be  the  rule  for  twenty  years  : 

We  think  that,  as  civilization  advances,  poetry 
almost  necessarily  declines. 

Here  was  an  unequivocal  challenge  to  an  age  of 
poetical  decline.  The  experimental  sciences  were  being 
investigated,  and  Macaulay,  speaking  for  his  time,  offered 
no  kind  of  encouragement  to  those  who  resisted  the 
stream. 

The  vocabulary  of  an  enlightened  society  is  philo- 
sophical, that  of  a  half -civilized  people  is  poetical.  ,  .  . 
In  proportion  as  men  know  more  and  think  more, 
they  look  less  at  individuals  and  more  at  classes.  They 
therefore  make  better  theories  and  worse  poems.  .  .  . 
Analysis  is  not  the  business  of  the  poet.  His  office  is 
to  pourtray,  not  to  dissect. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        157 

One  great  poet  had  registered  this  observation  1, 
and  another  was  shortly  to  repeat  it  ^,  but — pace 
Macaulay — they  did  not  reach  the  same  conclusion  as 
to  the  illusory  character  of  the  imagination  : 

His  creed  on  such  subjects  will  no  more  influence 
his  poetry,  properly  so  called,  than  the  notions  which  a 
painter  may  have  conceived  respecting  the  lachrymal 
glands,  or  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  will  affect  the 
tears  of  his  Niobe,  or  the  blushes  of  his  Aurora. 

But,  allowing  for  the  lawyer  in  Macaulay  —  his 
dialectic  skill  in  stating  a  case — and  his  natural  gift 
of  epigram,  we  remember  that  scientific  accuracy  was 
to  enhance  the  value  of  Tennyson's  poetry,  as  it  was 
already  enhancing  the  value  of  Turner's  painting. 

In  an  enlightened  age  there  will  be  much  intelligence, 
much  science,  much  philosophy,  abundance  of  just 
classification  and  subtle  analysis,  abundance  of  wit 
and  eloquence,  abundance  of  verses,  and  even  of  good 
ones — but  little  poetry.  Men  will  judge  and  compare, 
but  they  will  not  create. 

The  proposition  is  couched  in  general  terms,  but  we 
recognize  it  at  once  as  an  ideal  picture  of  1825. 

Let  us  turn  to  another  of  these  pictures,  in  the  Robert 
Southey  of  1830  : 

If  we  were  to  prophesy  that  in  the  year  1930  a  popula- 
tion of  fifty  millions,  better  fed,  clad,  and  lodged  than 
the  English  of  our  time,  will  cover  these  islands,  that 

^  Wordsworth  :  '  The  world  is  too  much  with  us  '  {Sonnet),  and 
A  Poet's  Epitaph,  and  elsewhere. 

*  Tennyson  :  '  The  individual  withers,  and  the  world  is  more 
and  more  '  {Locksley  Hall),  and  In  Memoriam. 


158  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Sussex  and  Huntingdonshire  will  be  wealthier  than 
the  wealthiest  parts  of  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire 
are  now,  that  cultivation,  rich  as  that  of  a  flower- 
garden,  will  be  carried  to  the  very  tops  of  Ben  Nevis 
and  Helvellyn,  that  machines,  constructed  on  principles 
yet  undiscovered,  will  be  in  every  house,  that  there 
will  be  no  highways  but  railroads,  no  travelling  but  by 
steam,  that  our  debt,  vast  as  it  seems  to  us,  will  appear 
to  our  great-grandchildren  a  trifling  encumbrance, 
which  might  easily  be  paid  off  in  a  year  or  two,  many 
people  would  think  us  insane. 

The  insanity  was  rather  of  understatement.  We 
are  near  enough  to  1930  to  know  that  Macaulay  was 
well  within  the  mark  in  his  prophetical  hypothesis. 
But  note  the  materialism  of  the  objects  on  which  his 
mind  is  set.  Steam-power  and  wealth,  population 
and  finance.  There  is  no  place  for  the  imagination  in 
his  millennium.  Moreover,  his  main  argument  was 
wrong.  He  derided  '  Mr.  Southey's  idol,  the  omniscient 
and  omnipotent  State ',  and  held  that  '  our  rulers 
will  best  promote  the  improvement  of  the  people  by 
strictly  confining  themselves  to  their  own  legitimate 
duties  '.  The  ageing  poet  was  a  truer  prophet  than 
the  brilliant  young  advocate.  For  individualism  was 
to  yield  to  collectivism. 

To  Macaulay  as  an  historian  we  shall  come  in  a  later 
section  ;  his  History  of  England  belongs  to  1848-55. 
Here  we  are  concerned  with  his  '  mentality ' — to  use 
an  ugly  but  convenient  term — with  his  '  criticism  of 
life  '  in  the  age  in  which  he  lived  ;  and  we  see  clearly 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        159 

how  he  rendered  it  under  the  aspect  of  practical  use. 
The  appeal  to  nature,  he  seemed  to  say,  was  all  very- 
well  in  its  time.  Romance  and  imagination  availed 
to  restore  the  neglected  to  honour,  and  the  forgotten 
to  memory.  We  honour  the  poor  and  oppressed  ;  we 
remember  our  kinship  with  the  dust.  Now  we  turn 
from  principles  to  measures,  from  speculation  to 
analysis  and  comparison.  His  father's  example  was 
before  him — Zachary  Macaulay,  the  champion  of 
slaves — ,  and  he,  too,  became  a  champion  of  liberties, 
as  distinct  from  the  poets'  Liberty,  He  supported 
the  disabilities  of  the  Jews.  He  advocated  reasonable 
concessions  to  the  incoming  demos  : 

Time  is  bringing  round  another  crisis  analogous  to 
that  which  occurred  in  the  seventeenth  century.  We 
stand  in  a  situation  to  that  in  which  our  ancestors 
stood  under  the  reign  of  James  i.  It  will  soon  again 
be  necessary  to  reform  that  we  may  preserve,  to  save 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Constitution  by 
alterations  in  the  subordinate  parts. 

This  extract  from  his  essay  (1828)  on  Hallam's  Con- 
stitutional History  is  interesting  in  two  respects.  It 
suggests  the  cause  of  his  starting  his  own  history  of 
England  at  the  reign  of  James  11,  and  it  illustrates 
well  the  safe,  moderate,  unimaginative,  Whig-bred 
sensibihties  of  the  writer,  who  found  in  the  bastard 
ballads  entitled  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome  fitting  occupation 
for  a  practical  man's  leisure.  An  age  too  enlightened 
to  create  poetry  might  be  amused,  and  even  instructed, 
by  ingenious  mnemonic  exercises. 


i6o    NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

iii. 

Lord  A  similar  view  of  the  function  to  which  literature 

was  called,  and  a  not  dissimilar  career,  are  the  marks 
of  Edward  Bulwer.  He  started  to  write  about  the 
same  time  as  Macaulay,  but  chose  the  Quarterly  tradi- 
tion instead  of  the  Edinburgh.  His  gifts  were  more 
multifarious,  and,  making  literature  his  staff,  he  wrote 
for  all  kinds  of  periodicals.  He  entered  ParHament 
in  1831,  and,  like  Macaulay,  advocated  authors'  copy- 
right. He  became  Colonial  Secretary  on  the  Con- 
servative side,  and  was  created  a  peer  in  1866,  as  Lord 
Lytton  of  Knebworth.  His  son,  who  was  Viceroy  of 
India  and  British  Ambassador  in  Paris,  was  raised 
from  a  baron  to  an  earl.  Incidentally,  too,  under  his 
pen-name  of  '  Owen  Meredith ',  the  second  Lord  Lytton 
ran  counter  to  the  Hterary  opinions  of  the  first.  Owen 
Meredith,  in  the  intervals  of  diplomacy,  pubUshed 
several  volumes  of  poems.  The  Wanderer  (1857),  Lucile 
(1860),  Orval  (1869),  and  King  Poppy  (1892).  To  these 
meritorious  recreations  of  a  brilliant  and  strenuous 
public  life  reference  is  due  later  on.  Here  it  is  in- 
teresting to  note  that  Edward  Bulwer,  in  Paul  Clifford, 
the  fourth  of  a  series  of  social  novels,  proclaimed 
the  death  of  poetry  (and,  by  impUcation,  its  intestacy) 
as  a  remunerative  branch  of  literature.  In  a  later 
preface  (1848)  to  the  same  book,  he  referred  this  decease 
to  causes  inherent  in  the  age  : 

The  novel  is  a  loud  cry  to  society.  ...  It  is  an 
appeal  from  Humanity  to  Law.     And,  thus,  if  it  could 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         161 

not  pretend  to  influence  or  guide  the  temper  of  the 
times,  it  was  at  least  a  foresign  of  the  coming  change.  .  .  . 
The  true  movement  of  the  last  fifteen  years  has  been 
the  progress  of  one  idea — Social  Reform.  .  .  ,  With  the 
completion  of  this  work  closed  an  era  in  the  writer's 
self -education.  From  Pelham  to  Paul  Clifford,  the 
Author  rather  observes  than  imagines  ;  rather  deals 
with  the  ordinary  surface  of  human  life  than  attempts, 
however  humbly,  to  soar  above  it,  or  to  dive  beneath. 

But  out  of  an  age  which  '  rather  observes  than 
imagines ',  and  which  appeals  '  from  Humanity  to 
Law  ' — from  humane  studies  to  the  legislature — , 
great  literature  is  not  made. 

The  same  point  of  view  was  expressed  in  the  prefaces 
to  other  of  Lytton's  novels.  Thus,  in  A  Strange  Story 
(1861),  in  which,  with  sensational  success,  Bulwer 
returned  in  part  to  the  older  convention  of  terror,  he 
remarked  that,  '  in  the  brains  of  our  time,  the  faculty 
of  Causation  is  very  markedly  developed ' — it  was  so 
new  that  he  underlined  it — ,  and  he  '  presumed  to 
borrow  from  Science  some  elements  of  interest  for 
Romance '.  The  borrowing  has  been  considerable 
since,  and  no  apology  is  made.  It  has  gone  far  to 
leaven  the  mass,  and  the  positive  method  that  rules 
it  has  produced,  in  unskilful  hands,  the  ugliness  of 
dissection  and  analysis,  unrelieved  by  imagination, 
and  ignorant  of  the  canons  of  beauty,  which  so  many 
modern  novels  display.  To  this,  too,  we  shall  come 
back  later  on.  Lytton's  dues  of  leadership  require 
that  his  early  perception  of  the  tendency,  and  his 
II 


i62     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

frequent  right  use  of  it — observing  its  proper  limit- 
ations, and  checking  its  abuse  by  art — should  be  recorded 
in  this  place. 

Another  quotation  may  be  given  from  the  preface 
(1845)  to  a  new  edition  of  Night  and  Morning.  At 
that  date  Dickens  was  in  the  field,  and  Lytton,  intro- 
ducing his  Robert  Beaufort, '  the  systematic  self-server  ', 
pays  an  appropriate  compliment  to  the  ideal  prototype 
of  such  characters,  the  PecksnifE  of  Dickens,  '  the 
popular  and  pre-eminent  Observer  of  the  age  in  which 
we  live  '.  But  the  eclipse  of  Lytton  by  Dickens  as 
an  observer  of  his  times  is  not  immediately  in  question. 
All  the  literature  of  this  period  reaches  out  to  the 
period  to  come.  The  point  is  that  Lytton,  in  this 
novel,  sought  to  advance  his  art  another  step.  He 
always  took  it  very  seriously,  and  here  he  traces  its 
growth  : 

I  impress  not  here,  as  in  Paul  Clifford,  a  material 
moral  to  work  its  effect  on  the  Journals,  at  the  Hustings, 
through  Constituents,  and  on  Legislation.  I  direct 
myself  to  a  channel  less  active,  more  tardy,  but  as 
sure — to  the  Conscience  that  reigns,  closer  and  superior 
to  all  Law,  in  men's  hearts  and  souls. 

And  again, 

I  am,  not  vainly,  conscious  that  I  have  had  my 
influence  on  my  time — that  I  have  contributed,  though 
humbly  and  indirectly,  to  the  benefits  which  Public 
Opinion  has  extorted  from  Governments  and  Laws. 

Lastly,    from    the    preface    to    Eugene    Aram,    the 
criminal  (1704-59)  whose  tragic  hfe-history  had  been 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         163 

considered  already  by  William  Godwin  as  a  subject 
for  a  novel,  Lytton,  defending  his  choice,  declares 
that 

The  moral  consisted  in  showing  more  than  the  mere 
legal  punishment  at  the  close.  It  was  to  show  how 
the  consciousness  of  the  deed  was  to  exclude  whatever 
humanity  of  character  preceded  and  belied  it  from 
all  active  exercise — all  social  confidence. 

The  last  two  words  are  all-important.  This  new 
class  of  fiction  with  a  purpose,  new  then,  but  very 
old  to-day,  aimed  directly  at  reflecting,  through  a 
popular  medium,  the  social  aspirations  of  the  age. 
'  Aspirations '  is,  perhaps,  too  exalted  a  term  for  the 
severely  practical  forms  in  which  the  age  clothed  its 
desires.  Macaulay,  as  a  statesman,  did  not  aspire  ; 
there  was  nothing  visionary  in  his  judgment.  But 
as  far  as  the  policy  of  the  times  was  directed  to  well- 
defined  ends  for  social  benefit  and  welfare,  Lytton, 
in  certain  of  his  novels,  pursued  and  displayed  the 
like  purpose.  His  splendid  versatility  turned  from 
one  method  to  another,  according  to  the  shifting  direc- 
tion of  the  breeze  of  public  taste.  Novels  of  social 
reform,  novels  of  criminal  warning,  novels  of  historical 
example,  and  novels  of  domestic  manners — Pelham, 
Eugene  Aram,  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  and  The 
Caxtons — ^flowed  in  full  measure  from  his  pen.  He 
may  have  proved  too  versatile,  too  easily  successful, 
to  win  the  high  place  which  he  sought.  Such  rapid 
minting  of  characters  is  apt  to  produce  faint  im- 
pressions ;   and   the   man  who  combined  the  parts  of 


i64     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

politician,  statesman,  novelist,  playwright,  miscellanist, 
and,  in  private  life,  of  defendant  against  lawsuits 
and  attacks  unremittingly  urged  by  his  wife,  may  be 
forgiven  if  his  depth  is  fathomable.  His  style,  too,  is 
somewhat  otiose  for  the  taste  of  the  present  generation, 
and  Thackeray's  parody,  George  de  Barnwell,  though 
unkind,  was  not  too  severe.  But,  all  deduction  not- 
withstanding, Edward  Bulwer,  more  than  any  other, 
filled  the  place  left  vacant  by  Byron  as  the  critic  of 
the  life  of  his  times. 

Finally,   there    was    Benjamin    Disraeli    (1804-81), 
afterwards  Prime  Minister  and  Earl  of    Beaconsfield, 
a  far  greater  statesman  than  either  Lytton  or  Macaulay, 
but  inferior  to  both  in  authorship.     His  chief  novels — 
Vivian  Grey,  The  Young  Duke,  Alroy,  Venetia,  Henrietta 
Temple — were    published  within   these    fifteen   years, 
1825-40.     Others,  more  political  in  subject,  followed 
during  the   next   decade,   the   well-known   Coning  shy 
among  them  ;  Loihair  appeared  in  1870,  and  Endymion 
as  late  as  1881,  in  the  year  of  Beaconsfield's  death. 
They  are  not  in  any  sense  great  literature  ;   but,  even 
without  allowing  for  the  interest  they  bear  on  account 
of  Disraeli's  place  in  politics — an  adventitious,  though 
not   imjust,  advantage — they  command   considerably 
more   than    mere    attention    and   respect.     Disraeli's 
characters  have  a  nimbus,  which,  if  it  is  not  natural 
air,  is  often  a  far  better  substitute,  and  creates  a  more 
likely  illusion,  than  Lytton  could  devise.     They  move 
with  too  heavy  a  panoply,  but  they  move  of  their 
own  accord,  and  their  cleverness  is  beyond  dispute. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        165 


IV. 

A  philosophy  of  the  new  life,  a  one  man's  view  of 
its  many  aspects,  was  the  motive  of  Sartor  Resartus, 
written  about  1830,  and  issued  through  Fraser^s 
Magazine  in  1833,  the  first  considerable  work  of 
Thomas  Carlyle  (1795-1881). 

Like  several  of  the  giants  of  these  times — Words-  Carlyle's 
worth  and  Landor  among  the  elders — ,  Carlyle 
lived  to  a  great  age.  He  spent  his  boyhood  in  the 
shadow  of  the  French  Revolution,  a  history  of  which 
was  his  masterpiece,  and  he  survived  the  death  of 
the  third  Napoleon  and  of  the  Prince  Imperial  of 
France.  Born  at  Ecclefechan,  in  Dumfriesshire,  the 
son  of  a  North  country  stonemason,  he  was  intended 
for  the  national  Church,  which  satisfies  the  intel- 
lectual ambition  of  so  many  humble  Scottish  youth. 
His  parents'  thrift  secured  his  education,  and  his 
abilities  rewarded  their  self-denial.  At  the  grammar- 
school  at  Annan,  and  afterwards  at  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity, he  laid  the  foundation  of  the  hard  reading 
which  he  practised  till  the  last.  Possibly,  the  scholar's 
temperament  soared  too  high  from  the  cottar's  soil; 
possibly,  the  hardships  of  upbringing,  '  safe  and  quiet ' 
though  it  was,  fell  too  severely  on  a  studious  lad  ;  but 
certainly,  before  he  was  twenty-five,  he  was  already  a 
victim  to  dyspepsia,  from  which  he  suffered  all  his  Ufe. 
A  moral,  or  spiritual,  dyspepsia  seized  upon  him  at  the 
same  time,  and  the  one  may  have  aggravated  the  other. 


i66  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Abandoning  the  plan  of  the  ministry,  he  settled  in 
Edinburgh  (1818),  after  an  interval  of  schoolmaster- 
ing.  There  he  read  law  and  learnt  German — the  more 
important  study  of  the  two.  Directly,  he  wrote  a 
paper  on  Faust  for  the  New  Edinburgh  Review  (1822), 
translated  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister  (1824),  and  con- 
tributed a  ii'/eo/^ScMZer  (1825)  to  the  iow(Zon  Magazine  ; 
indirectly,  he  absorbed  the  Teuton  spirit  as  conveyed 
by  the  idealism  of  Fichte,  the  forerunner  of  recent 
German  SociaHsm,  by  the  problem  of  Faust  itself, 
and,  above  all,  by  the  medley  of  enchantment — the 
riotous  and  romantic  individualism — of  Jean  Paul 
Friedrich  Richter  (1763-1825),  commonly  known  as 
Jean  Paul.  To  Richter  he  owed  very  much  of  his  early 
over-mannered  style,  as  well  as  of  his  powers  of  expres- 
sion, with  its  extraordinary  range  through  the  humorous, 
the  magical-tender,  and  the  grotesque.  These  studies 
fell  on  good  soil,  for  Coleridge,  De  Quincey,  and  others 
had  fostered  a  taste  for  German  letters  ;  and  Carlyle's 
literary  career  was,  accordingly,  well  begun.  In 
1826  he  married  Jane  BailHe  Welsh  (1801-66),  and 
settled,  in  1828,  with  his  wife  at  her  farmhouse  at 
Craigenputtock.  He  became  an  Edinburgh  reviewer, 
and  the  second  great  lowly  Scottish  writer  contri- 
buted to  that  Review  an  illuminating  paper  on  Burns, 
the  great  Scottish  peasant-poet,  who  had  died  in  the 
year  after  Carlyle's  birth.  Then  came  Sartor  Resartus, 
and  the  removal  of  the  Carlyles  to  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea  ; 
the  French  Revolution  (1837) ;  Heroes  and  Hero- Worship 
(1841) ;    Past  and  Present  (1843) ;    the  Life  of  Sterling 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        167 

and  Frederick  the  Great — and  the  death  of  Mrs.  Carlyle. 
Into  the  loss  and  gain  of  that  marriage  we  do  not 
propose  to  enter ;  its  sudden  termination  was  an 
abiding  grief,  in  which  a  Lord  Rectorship  and  other 
honours,  in  the  grey,  great  prophet's  old  age,  were  too 
late  to  reward  his  early  struggles. 

A  part  of  the  younger  story,  not  only  of  Carlyle.  but  Sartor 
of  his  generation,  is  enshrined  in  Sartor  Resartus. 
This  wonderful  book,  implicated  fold  by  fold  in 
the  maze  of  its  pretended  German  authorship,  and 
revealing  the  heart  of  Carlyle  through  the  mock  sur- 
roundings and  literary  remains — properly,  '  the  life 
and  opinions  ' — of  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  Professor 
of  Things  in  General  (AUerlei-Wissenschaft)  in  the 
University  of  Utopia  (Weissnichtwo),  purports  to  be  a 
philosophy  of  clothes,  in  the  sense,  mainly,  of  Goethe's 
aphorism  that  '  Nature  is  the  Uving,  visible  Garment 
of  God  '.  The  basis  is  broad  enough  to  bear  the  weight 
of  many  arguments,  from  the  simple  clothes-satire 
of  the  early  chapters — for  instance.  Book  I,  chapter  ix, 
'  Often  in  my  atrabiliar  moods  .  .  .'  and  '  lives  the 
man  that  can  figure  a  naked  Duke  of  Windlestraw 
addressed  a  naked  House  of  Lords  ?  ' — through  the 
biography  (part  fiction,  part  truth)  and  ethics  of 
Book  II,  to  the  political  and  metaphysical  specula- 
tions out  of  which  the  Third  Book  is  composed. 
We  are  told,  not  unkindly,  of  his  early  fife,  and 
are  admitted  to  glimpses  of  the  struggle  between 
Carlyle's  soul,  capacious  of  religion,  and  his  mind 
rejecting  its  formulas  : 


i68     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  hungry  young  looked  up  to  their  spiritual 
nurses ;  and,  for  food,  were  bidden  eat  the  east- wind.  .  .  . 
In  the  silent  night-watches,  still  darker  in  his  heart 
than  over  sky  and  earth,  he  (Teufelsdrockh)  has  cast 
himself  before  the  All-seeing,  and,  with  audible 
prayers,  cried  vehemently  for  Light,  for  dehverance 
from  Death  and  the  Grave.  Not  till  after  long  years, 
and  unspeakable  agonies,  did  the  believing  heart 
surrender ;  sink  into  spell-bound  sleep,  under  the 
nightmare.  Unbelief;  and,  in  this  hag-ridden  dream, 
mistake  God's  fair,  living  world  for  a  pallid,  vacant 
Hades  and  extinct  Pandemonium.  But  through  such 
Purgatory  pain  it  is  appointed  us  to  pass ;  first  must 
the  dead  Letter  of  Religion  own  itself  dead,  and  drop 
piecemeal  into  dust,  if  the  living  spirit  of  Religion, 
freed  from  this  its  charnel-house,  is  to  arise  on  us, 
newborn  of  Heaven,  and  with  new  healing  under  its 
wings. 

And  then  Carlyle  himself  resumes  the  commentator's 
role,  and  tells  of  the  '  earthly  distresses  '  added  to 
these  '  Purgatory  pains  ' — of  the  '  want  of  practical 
guidance,  want  of  sympathy,  want  of  money,  want  of 
hope  ;  and  all  this  in  the  fervid  season  of  youth,  so 
exaggerated  in  imagining,  so  boundless  in  desires '. 
Something,  Carlyle  tells  us,  had  been  accomplished 
when  he  left  the  University,  for  '  truly  a  Thinking  Man 
is  the  worst  enemy  the  Prince  of  Darkness  can  have  *, 
and  the  '  thaumaturgy '  of  thought  is  a  part  of 
Carlyle's  gospel.  The  wonder  of  Romance  was  added, 
and  the  miracle  of  Sorrow.  So  we  come  to  Carlyle's 
central  doctrine,  and  to  his  gospel  of  work  : 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        169 

Our  works  are  the  mirror  wherein  the  spirit  i&rst 
sees  its  natural  lineaments.  Hence,  too,  the  folly 
of  that  impossible  precept.  Know  thyself  ;  till  it  be 
translated  into  this  partially  possible  one,  Know  what 
thou  canst  work  at. 

This  perception  leads  to  reconstruction  : 

The  poor  Earth,  with  her  poor  joys,  was  now  my 
needy  Mother,  not  my  cruel  Stepdame ;  Man,  with  his 
so  mad  wants  and  his  so  mean  endeavours,  had  become 
the  dearer  to  me. 

Teufelsdrockh,  says  Carlyle,  '  here  first  got  his  eye 
on  the  knot  that  had  been  strangling  him '.  The 
'  authentic  Church  -  Catechism '  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  still  to  be  compiled,  but,  meanwhile, 
Teufelsdrockh  says  : 

For  niy  own  private  behoof,  I  attempt  to  elucidate 
the  matter  so.  Man's  Unhappiness,  as  I  construe, 
comes  of  his  Greatness  ;  it  is  because  there  is  an 
Infinite  in  him,  which  with  all  his  cunning  he  cannot 
quite  bury  under  the  Finite.  Will  the  whole  Finance 
Ministers  and  Upholsterers  and  Confectioners  of 
modern  Europe  undertake,  in  joint-stock  company, 
to  make  one  shoeblack  happy  ?  They  cannot  accom- 
plish it,  above  an  hour  or  two  ;  for  the  shoeblack 
also  has  a  soul  quite  other  than  his  stomach,  .  .  . 
Always  there  is  a  black  spot  in  our  sunshine  :  it  is 
even,  as  I  said,  the  shadow  of  Ourselves. 

And  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter, — a  Carlylean 
epigram  in  black  and  white  :  '  Close  thy  Byron  ;  open 
thy  Goethe  '  ;    equivalent,  in  the  next  paragraph,  to 


170     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  summary  rescript :  '  Love  not  Pleasure  ;  love  God, 
This  is  the  Everlasting  Yea,  wherein  all  contradiction 
is  solved  ;  wherein  whoso  walks  and  works,  it  is  well 
with  him ', 

It  is  not  possible  to  pinch  the  philosophy  of  Sartor 
Resartus  into  the  pillule  of  a  resume.  Still  to-day, 
nearly  eighty  years  after,  Carlyle  may  enter  his  plea 
for  his  fictitious,  self-pourtraying  hero  :  '  His  ideas 
may  by  and  by  prove  significant.  ...  To  look  through 
the  Shows  of  things  into  Things  themselves  he  is  led  and 
compelled '.  This  account,  abbreviated  almost  un- 
recognizably, has  omitted  the  whole  of  Book  III, 
with  its  wonderful  chapters  on  '  Symbols  ',  '  Organic 
Filaments  ',  '  Natural  Supernaturalism  ',  and  others. 
Here  we  find  the  distrust  of  the  ballot-box,  the  nucleus 
of  the  lectures  on  hero-worship,  the  new  religion  of 
literature,  the  littleness  of  human  science,  the  ob- 
struction of  custom  and  names,  the  wonder  of  daily 
life  and  common  things,  the  '  dandiacal  sect '  and 
the  '  poor-slaves  ' — a  scathing  satire  on  fashionable 
society — ,  the  illusions  of  space  and  time,  and  the  last 
word  of  all :  '  Well  at  ease  are  the  Sleepers  for  whom 
Existence  is  a  Shallow  Dream  '. 


Carlyle's        SartoT  Resartus  set  the  lines  which  Carlyle  followed 

writin  s     throughout  the  rest  of  his  life-work.      His  Lectures 

on  Heroes,  Hero-Worship,  and  the  Heroic  in  History 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        171 

took  certain  phases  of  human  action,  and  discussed 
the  philosophy  of  the  kind  in  connection  with  definite 
types:  Odin  and  the  myths  of  Scandinavia  (a  new 
field  for  literature  at  that  time)  for  '  the  hero  as 
divinity ' ;  Mahomet  for  '  the  hero  as  prophet ' ;  Dante 
and  Shakespeare  for  '  the  hero  as  poet '  ;  Luther  and 
Knox  for  '  the  hero  as  priest '.  The  closing  sentences 
of  this  essay  illustrate  the  Carlylean  point  of  view  : 

All  true  Reformers  are  by  the  nature  of  them  Priests, 
and  strive  for  a  Theocracy.  .  .  .  Hildebrand  wished 
for  a  Theocracy  ;  Cromwell  wished  for  it,  fought  for 
it ;  Mahomet  attained  it.  .  .  .  How  far  such  Ideals 
can  ever  be  introduced  into  Practice,  and  at  what 
point  our  impatience  with  their  non-introduction 
ought  to  begin,  is  always  a  question.  .  .  .  There  will 
never  be  wanting  Regent-Murrays  enough  to  shrug 
their  shoulders,  and  say,  A  devout  imagination.  .  .  . 
The  Earth  will  not  become  too  godlike  ! 

Johnson,  Rousseau,  and  Burns  were  selected  for 
'  the  hero  as  man  of  letters  ',  and  the  essay  yields 
rich  spoils  of  familiar  quotations.  Three  of  these 
may  be  set  down,  since  they  contain  what  practically 
amounts  to  a  criticism  of  life  within  the  period  we 
are  discussing.  The  first  is  the  sanction  of  education  : 
'  The  true  University  of  these  days  is  a  Collection  of 
Books  '.  The  second  is  the  christening  of  the  Press  : 
'  Burke  said  there  were  three  Estates  in  Parliament ; 
but,  in  the  Reporters'  Gallery  yonder,  there  sat  a 
Fourth  Estate  more  important  far  than  they  all '. 
The  third  is  the  people's  charter  :    '  Invent  Writing, 


172     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Democracy  is  inevitable '.  Finally,  Cromwell  and 
Napoleon  were  his  types  of  'the  hero  as  king'. 

The  reader  of  these  six  lectures,  rich  with  what 
Carlyle  here  again  calls  the  '  thaumaturgic  virtue ' 
of  thought,  and  full  of  the  spirit  of  noble  conduct 
measuring  the  acts  of  men,  will  weU-nigh  share  the 
impulsion  which  presently  drove  Carlyle  to  more 
extensive  studies  of  two  moments.  In  the  last  of  the 
six  essays  he  had  written  : 

We  are  all  born  enemies  of  Disorder  ;  it  is  tragical 
for  us  aU  to  be  concerned  in  image-breaking  and  down- 
pulling  ;  for  the  Great  Man,  more  a  man  than  we, 
it  is  doubly  tragical.  Thus  too  all  human  things, 
maddest  French  Sansculottism,  do  and  must  work 
towards  Order.  .  .  .  While  man  is  man,  some  Cromwell 
or  Napoleon  is  the  necessary  finish  of  a  Sansculottism. 
.  .  .  The  old  ages  are  brought  back  to  us  ;  the  manner 
in  which  Kings  were  made,  and  Kingship  itself  first 
took  rise,  is  again  exhibited  in  the  history  of  these 
Two. 

To  the  drama  of  the  first  of  these  moments  Carlyle 
devoted  his  next  few  years — literally,  devoted,  in  one 
sense,  for  a  part  of  the  manuscript  was  burnt  and  had 
to  be  rewritten^,  and  produced  (1837)  his  History  of 
the  French  Revolution.  Of  the  second,  in  1845,  there  is 
his  monument  in  the  Letters  and  Speeches  of  Oliver 
Cromwell.  He  went  down  a  third  time  into  Valhalla, 
spending  fourteen  years,  as  Mrs.  Carlyle  said,  '  in  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  Frederick ',  and  wrote  his 
History  of  Frederick  the  Great — it  may  be  noted  that 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        173 

Teufelsdrockh's  father,  in  Sartor  Resartus,  'had  been 
grenadier  Sergeant,  and  even  regimental  Schoolmaster  ' 
under  that  same  '  Fritz  the  Only '  (Bk,  II,  ch.  i,  init.) — ; 
and  round  these  great  historical  pieces  there  are  grouped 
his  minor  writings,  part  moral,  part  historical,  part 
political.  Chartism,  Past  and  Present,  Latter  -  Day 
Pamphlets,  Life  of  John  Sterling  (1806-44),  and  various 
miscellanies,  as  well  as  his  Reminiscences,  published  in 
1881.  His  life  was  written  by  J.  A.  Froude  (1818-94), 
himself  a  notable  historian,  to  whom  we  shall  recur  in  a 
later  section  ;  and  the  frankness  which  marked  Froude's 
treatment  of  the  material  confided  to  him  was,  perhaps, 
in  advance  of  the  rights  of  posterity,  and  deflected 
men's  interest  for  many  years  from  Carlyle,  the  sage, 
to  Carlyle,  the  husband.  He  remains,  indisputably, 
the  sage,  great  in  his  strength  and  its  limitations, 
rugged,  true,  and  deeply  tender,  scornful  of  indolence 
and  cant,  an  historian  as  painstaking  as  he  is  brilliant, 
and  a  pure  fountain  of  moral  refreshment. 


VI. 

It  is  common  to  speak  of  Carlyle's  style  as  something  Carlyle's 
fantastic  and  apart,  and  what  is  called  unintelligible. 
'  Over-mannered '  it  may  fairly  be  termed  ;  we  em- 
ployed this  epithet  above,  in  referring  the  quality 
to  Teutonic  influence  or  example.  But,  even  so, 
deductions  must  be  made,  for  no  small  share  of  the 
mannerism  is  contributed  by  printers'  devices.     The 


174     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

capital  letters  account  for  something,  and  the  italic 
types  for  something  more,  and  much  of  the  rest  is  made 
up  out  of  rhetorical  figures,  which,  when  we  meet 
them  in  Greek  poets,  we  greet  as  ornaments  of  style  : 
aposiopesis,  for  example,  or  the  abrupt  succession  of 
one  thought  on  the  heels  of  another ;  apostrophe, 
and  its  marks  of  interjection,  so  frequent  in  Carlyle's 
pages  ;  epanalepsis,  or  the  author's  repair  to  a  word 
or  sentence  dropt  above ;  soraismus,  a  hospitable 
device,  which  covers  Carlyle's  German  terms  and 
Germanizings, — and  others  enough.  The  presence  of 
these  figures  is  unfamiliar,  or,  at  least,  disguised,  in 
the  prose  of  most  English  writers.  Carlyle,  obscure 
by  birth,  studious  by  temperament,  and  a  recluse  by 
habit,  gave  them  a  ready  welcome,  and  tended,  doubt- 
less, in  course  of  years,  to  cultivate  them  for  their 
own  sake.  But  they  do  not  make  him  '  unintelHgible  ', 
save  only  to  the  unintelligent.  He  '  wants  '  reading, 
in  the  current  phrase  ;  he  wrote  for  the  mind  rather 
than  for  the  eye  ;  but  once  the  surprise  is  overcome 
of  finding  in  English  prose  a  poet-theologian  of  un- 
compromising honesty,  grand  simpUcity,  and  unaffected 
tenderness,  to  whom  truth  and  its  anomaHes  presented 
themselves  dramatically,  who,  like  the  prophets  of 
old,  sought  strange  images  to  expel  his  readers'  torpor, 
and  who  laboured  in  a  '  pregnant  obscurity '  ^,  such 
as  lay  upon  the  universe  before  the  light,  we  shall 
find  Carlyle  sweet  and  pure  enough,  and  shall  say  of 
him  as  Robert  Browning  said  of  iEschylus,  of  whom 
*  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  History  of  Oreek  Literature,  ch.  xv. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        175 

Carlyle  puts  us  in  mind,  that  his   '  eagle-bark '  has 
somehow  spoilt  our  '  taste  for  twitterings  '. 


YU. 

We  go  back  a  moment  to  Byron.  The  peer  and  the  Carlyle 
peasant  at  jBrst  sight  have  very  little  in  common  ;  glron 
in  all  the  accidents  of  fate  and  fortune  they  difiered 
thoroughly  and  obviously.  But  variations  of  soil 
and  sun  raise  different  blossoms  from  like  roots,  and, 
at  bottom,  Byron  and  Carlyle  were  joined  by  an  ethical 
purpose  which  their  contrasting  temperaments  disguised. 
Carlyle  was  a  Byron  moralized,  and  not  bred  to  the 
flesh-pots  of  Egypt ;  or  Byron  was  a  sensuous  Carlyle. 
Sartor  Resartus  and  the  Heroes  were  Carlyle's  Childe 
Harold ;  his  dramas  were  the  French  Revolution. 
Mutatis  mutandis — and  there  are  many — these  two 
contemporary  writers,  of  unequal  birth  and  fate, 
and  unequal  length  of  years,  display  a  true  Hkeness 
beneath  their  differences.  They  both  hated  shams 
and  pretence  ;  they  both  beUeved  in  the  strong  man, 
and  in  the  sovereignty  of  thought ;  they  both  read 
history  in  biography ;  both  inveighed  against  custom 
and  opinion  ;  they  were  both  unconventional  moralists, 
and  masters  of  the  arts  of  rhetoric. 

The  class  distinction  which  divided  them  was  itself 
a  source  of  equal  strength.  Byron  was  so  much  above, 
and  Carlyle  was  so  much  below  the  comfortable  plane 
of  compromise  that  each  could  afford  to  neglect  the 
conventions  of  '  respectable  '  thought.    The  moral  and 


176     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

intellectual  gain  in  both  instances  was  immense,  and 
it  is  not  wholly  to  be  measured  by  the  freshness 
and  the  fearlessness  which  are  obvious.  Carlyle,  the 
stonemason's  son,  like  Burns,  his  fellow-countryman, 
pierced  the  hypocrisies  and  follies  of  poUtics  and  society 
with  native  and  shrewd  independence.  Byron,  by 
virtue  of  his  rank  and  his  fiery  pride  in  it,  indulged  a 
contempt  for  the  shibboleths  to  which  he  would  not 
subscribe.  The  point  of  view  was  ultimately  identical, 
as  was  the  object  of  their  search.  Compare  the  opening 
of  Lectures  on  Heroes  ('  The  Hero  as  Divinity ')  with 
the  close  of  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage  (Canto  iv,  xciii 
and  onwards),  and  this  essential  likeness  emerges 
through  all  superficial  differences.  The  likeness  is 
deeper  than  the  differences,  and,  if  due  allowance 
be  made  for  the  unequal  fate  of  these  contemporaries — 
Byron  died  in  the  reign  of  George  iv  ;  Carlyle  lived  till 
within  six  years  of  Queen  Victoria's  first  jubilee — ,  it 
will  be  seen  to  absorb  the  differences  in  the  clear  light 
of  a  common  purpose.  For  Byron,  too,  in  a  sense — 
a  very  charitable  sense,  it  may  be,  and  haply  to  the 
detriment  of  right  action — was  likewise  preoccupied 
with  righteousness.  Lord  Morley,  writing  in  1870, 
when  Carlyle  was  still  living,  declared  that  Carlyle's 
doctrine  had  effectually  '  routed  Byronism '.  But 
the  fact  is,  Byronism  was  routed,  not  by  Carlyle,  or 
another,  but  by  the  death  of  Lord  Byron  himself. 
Add  to  Byronism  the  fulfilled  renown  which  Carlyle 
lived  to  inherit,  and  Lord  Morley's  notes  of  contrast 
are  touched  to  a  deeper  sympathy.     'Carlylism',  he 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         177 

writes,  'is  the  male  of  Byronism.  It  is  Byronism 
with  thew  and  sinew,  bass  pipe  and  shaggy  bosom. 
There  is  the  same  grievous  complaint  against  the  time 
and  its  men  and  its  spirit,  something  even  of  the  same 
contemptuous  despair,  the  same  sense  of  the  puniness 
of  man  in  the  centre  of  a  cruel  and  frowning  universe  ; 
but  there  is  in  Carlylism  a  deliverance  from  it  all, 
indeed  the  only  deliverance  possible.  Its  despair  is  a 
despair  without  misery.  Labour  in  a  high  spirit,  duty 
done,  and  right  service  performed  in  fortitudinous 
temper — here  was,  not  indeed  a  way  out,  but  a  way  of 
erect  living  within '. 


Vlll. 

Meanwhile,  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  writers,  less 
sure  than  Lytton  and  Macaulay,  and  far  more  timid 
than  Carlyle,  whose  work  we  have  classed  as  the  litera- 
ture of  suspense  ? 

Theirs  was  not  a  conscious  timidity.  They  did  not  Contem- 
deliberately  turn  aside  from  greater  opportunities  Cariyle!  ° 
proposed  to  them.  '  Well  at  ease  are  the  sleepers 
for  whom  existence  is  a  shallow  dream ',  and,  perhaps, 
the  worst  that  can  be  said  of  them  is  that  they  slept 
at  the  edge  of  the  dawn.  They  missed,  in  Carlyle's 
generation,  the  particular  combination  of  chances 
which  composed  his  strenuous  fate  ;  and,  missing  it, 
they  fell  short  of  his  achievement. 

A  partial  parallel  may  be  sought  from  the  evidence  of 
history.    For  these  writers,  in  their  relation  to  Carlyle, 
12 


178     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

may  be  said  to  have  repeated  the  role  of  the  Cavalier 
poets,  almost  exactly  two  hundred  years  before,  towards 
the  eagle-flight  of  Milton.  They,  too,  when  the 
challenge  to  duty  came,  and  the  engine  stood  ready 
at  the  door,  were  discovered  in  a  '  shallow  dream ', 
at  ease  in  the  Zion  which  they  loved.  Milton  had  been 
summoned,  in  Lycidas  (1637),  to  a  purgation  of  the 
Church,  as  Carlyle  was  summoned,  in  Sartor  (1833),  to 
the  cause  of  social  reform.  But  the  choir  of  irrespons- 
ible divines,  with  Robert  Herrick  at  their  head,  did  not 
listen  to  the  trumpet.  The  noise  of  battle  went  by 
them.  They  were  sporting  with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade. 
A  like  egotism  and  self-indulgence  mark  the  work 
of  Carlyle's  contemporaries.  They  possessed  rare 
faculties  and  gifts — Herrick,  too,  had  the  charm  of 
his  kind — ,  but  their  direction  was  remote  from  the 
highway.  They  strayed  into  bypaths  and  blind  alleys. 
They  made  shift  with  a  semblance  of  the  might,  of 
which  Carlyle — and  the  Byron  who  would  have  been — 
clutched  at  the  substance.  They  took  shelter  in 
corners  of  the  field.  They  tended  their  delicate  plants, 
and  the  great  winds  of  power  passed  over  them.  Their 
'  Nesera  '  wore  different  shapes.  For  one,  the  tangles 
of  her  hair  were  the  threads  of  a  superfine  style  with 
which  he  played  till  they  broke.  For  another,  her 
murky  shade  was  a  lure  for  fanciful  ghosts  which  drove 
the  light  from  his  mind.  For  a  third,  the  echo  of  her 
laughter  was  louder  than  the  music  which  it  mocked. 
The  radiance  of  Shelley  and  Keats  was  refracted  in 
prismatic  hues,  the  '  hues  of  flourished  steel '  of  a 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         179 

later  poet.  The  streaming  confidence  of  Wordsworth 
was  turned  back  to  the  emotions  from  which  it  sprang. 
Day  was  breaking  unacclaimed,  save  by  the  prophecies 
of  Carlyle.  None  other  waited  for  the  morning,  to 
bring  glad  tidings  from  the  East.  The  poets  who 
should  have  gone  to  meet  it  lay  dead  in  Italy  and  Greece, 
and  the  lesser  voices  of  the  twilight  proved  unequal 
to  the  call.  The  sessions  of  thought  were  invaded  by 
the  trivial,  the  vernacular,  and  the  bizarre.  Weeping 
was  better  than  sorrow,  laughter  better  than  joy ;  it 
was  better  to  die  than  to  live. 


IX. 

Alfred  Tennyson  (1809-92),  afterwards  poet-laureate  Tennyson: 
(1850)  and  a  peer  (1884),  was  among  these  writers  period. 
of  the  twilight,  though  he  lived  to  emerge  from 
its  shadow.  His  note  was  never  very  sure,  yet  his 
finer  instincts  overcame  the  surrender  which  his  cir- 
cumstances encouraged.  So  strongly,  through  all  his 
limitations,  did  he  aspire  towards  the  light,  and  so 
strong  a  voice  he  lived  to  raise  above  other  makers  of 
our  songs,  that  he  would  seem  almost  in  his  own  despite 
to  have  followed  in  his  earliest  poems  the  hue  of  least 
resistance.  Even  there,  in  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical 
(1830)  ^,  and,  certainly,  in  his  second  volume — Poems 

^  Lord  Tennyson  had  collaborated  with  his  elder  brothers, 
Frederick  (1807-98)  and  Charles  (afterwards  Tennyson-Tumer, 
1808-79),  in  the  so-called  Poema  by  Two  Brothers  (182[6]7),  but 
AoEC  T108  novimua  esse  nihil  was  its  not  inappropriate  motto. 


i8o  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

(183[2]3) — lie  displayed  clear  signs  of  the  influence 
which  he  was  later  to  wield.  Still,  the  faults  of  the 
times  lay  upon  him.  He  compares  unfavourably  in 
this  respect  with  Carlyle  and  his  summons  to  his  age. 
Tennyson's  boyhood  in  the  rectory  at  Somersby  and 
his  pleasant  undergraduate  career  {In  Memoriam,  Ixxxv) 
formed  a  wholly  different  training  from  that  at '  Entep- 
fuhl '  and  '  Weissnichtwo  ',  where  Carlyle  placed  the 
drama  of  his  experience.  Or,  contrast  these  Poems, 
chiefly  Lyrical  with  the  Lyrical  Ballads  (1798)  of  just  a 
generation  before.  We  recall  from  the  preface  to  that 
work  that  the  poems  were  '  to  be  considered  as  experi- 
ments ',  and  that  readers  would  '  frequently  have 
to  struggle  with  feelings  of  strangeness  and  awkward- 
ness '.  Tennyson  owed  his  readers  no  such  apology. 
He  bowed  to  the  gods  of  his  own  day.  Adeline, 
Madeline,  Lilian,  and  the  rest  of  the  maids — and  their 
moods — ,  who  open  the  life-work  of  poetry  which  closed 
with  Crossing  the  Bar,  are  types  of  the  decay  of  romance. 
They  are  loose,  and  riotous,  and  detached,  damsels- 
errant  between  earth  and  heaven,  not  touched  by 
informing  genius  or  the  vital  Pygmalion-spark.  And 
the  like  beauty  of  decay  marks  his  iterated,  hyphenated 
language. 

Looking  back  on  Tennyson's  first  period,    ex  post 
facto  critics  discern  the  greater  poet  who  was  to  be  : 

It  is  man's  privilege  to  doubt, 

Tf  so  be  that  from  doubt  at  length 

Truth  may  stand  forth  unmoved  of  change, 

An  image  with  profulgent  brows, 

And  perfect  limbs,  as  from  the  storm 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        181 

Of  runniiig  fires  and  fluid  range 

Of  lawless  airs,  at  last  stood  out 

This  excellence  and  solid  form 

Of  constant  beauty.  .  . 

Shall  we  not  look  into  the  laws 

Of  life  and  death,  and  things  that  seem. 

And  things  that  be,  and  analyse 

Our  double  nature,  and  compare 

All  creeds,  tiU  we  have  found  the  one, 

If  one  there  be  ?     Ay  me !     I  fear 

All  may  not  doubt,  but  everywhere 

Some  must  clasp  Idols.     Yet,  my  God, 

Whom  call  I  Idol  ?     Let  Thy  dove 

Shadow  me  over,  and  my  sins 

Be  imremembered,  and  Thy  Love 

Enlighten.     Oh,  teach  me  yet 

Somewhat,  before  the  heavy  clod 

Weighs  on  me,  and  the  busy  fret 

Of  that  sharp-headed  worm  begins 

In  the  gross  blackness  underneath. 

0  weary  life  !     O  weary  death  ! 

O  spirit  and  heart  made  desolate  ! 

0  damned  vacillating  state  ! 

This  extract — from  the  Confessions  of  a  Sensitive  Mind 
(1830) — is  long,  but  it  is  not  too  long  for  the  occasion. 
Devout  Tennysonians  regard  it  as  sacred.  They 
repair  to  it  as  to  a  Pisgah,  commanding  the  promised 
land  of  In  Memoriam,  xcvi,  cxviii,  and  other  passages. 
But  at  the  time  in  which  it  appeared,  it  was  neither 
better  nor  worse — it  was,  certainly,  not  more  uplifting — 
than  much  contemporary  verse.  It  displayed  qualities 
which  persisted  through  all  Tennyson's  poetry,  though 
they  were  afterwards  merged  and  farther  to  seek, — 
qualities  of  inconsequence  and  banality,  or,  by  harsher 
judgment,  of  vulgarity. 


i82     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  anticipations  of  science  are  there,  reached  by 
insight  and  conjecture — the  sensitiveness  to  current 
or  to  imminent  speculation — ,  in  the  '  fluid  range  ' 
and  the  reign  of  law,  which  evolutionists  presently 
codified.  The  religious  speculation  was  there,  too, 
the  defence  of  philosophic  doubt,  and  the  popular, 
plausible  compromise.  Decadent  diction  was  obvious, 
in  'profulgent'  and  'fret',  and  similar  verbal  conceits, 
more  common  in  the  lyrical  poems,  and  gradually 
disused.  But  chiefly  typical  of  Tennyson  is  the  note 
of  inconsequence,  which  was  struck  in  the  querulous 
Hamlet  -  like  conclusion.  Even  when  his  powers 
matured,  and  distress  had  humanized  his  soul,  Tennyson 
found  it  hard  to  sustain  an  argument.  In  a  later 
section  we  shall  see  how  he  avoided  forms  which  re- 
quired a  consistent  and  exacting  material.  He  broke 
up  In  Memoriam  into  short  poems,  and  his  epic  into 
idyls.  He  did  not  hew  marbles  from  the  rock.  We 
are  dealing  here  with  the  beginning,  but  the  evil  of 
the  transition  years — their  twilight  timidity,  as  we 
have  called  it  —  overshadowed  his  genius  till  the 
end. 

Not  less  remarkably  typical  is  the  banal,  or  vulgar, 
note ;  the  curious  undertone  betraying,  by  an  un- 
conscious test,  the  imperfect  rapture  of  art.  Unlike 
Wordsworth,  who  distrusted  formal  beauty,  and  who 
lived  to  unwrite  in  cold  blood  his  best  verses  forged 
at  white  heat,  in  obedience  to  what  he  deemed  a  canon 
of  poetic  composition,  Tennyson  cared  for  form  most. 
He  never  published  rough  copies  of  his  verses.     More- 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  183a        183 

over,  the  fault  we  are  discussing  is  not  one  of  form  in 
the  first  instance.  It  is  revealed  in  jarring  notes,  but 
it  is  due  to  a  vice  of  temperament.  '  That  good  man, 
the  clergyman,  has  told  me  words  of  peace '  is  an  instance 
from  The  May  Queen  ;  '  the  little  town  Had  seldom 
seen  a  costHer  funeral '  is  another  from  Enoch  Arden. 
Both  of  these  were  among  his  early  poems,  and  the 
quality  is  more  subtly  concealed  in  the  point  of  view 
of  this  Sensitive  Mind,  with  its  easy  and  shallow 
sensibihties. 


X. 

Other  writers  seemed  to  show  equal  promise,  though  George 
they  did  not  Uve  to  justify  it.  George  Darley  (1798- 
1846),  an  Irishman,  a  mathematician,  and  a  friend 
of  Charles  Lamb — and  a  worse  stammerer  than  he — 
was  joined  with  Tennyson  by  Carlyle  ;  and  Thomas 
Lovell  Beddoes  (1803-49),  a  physiologist,  for  many 
years  a  wanderer  on  the  Continent,  and  a  nephew  of 
Maria  Edgeworth,  was  at  one  time  deemed  his  superior. 
The  fact  is,  this  note  of  detachment  was  not  very  hard 
to  acquire.  The  loose  and  unrelated  forms  of  the 
romantic  convention,  cultivated  mainly  for  its  own 
sake,  and  remote  from  active  life,  lay  ready  to  hand, 
in  closet-studies  of  Elizabethan  dramatists,  and  of 
Keats's  manner  without  Keats's  aim.  We  need  not 
pause  at  obvious  echoes,  such  as,  for  instance,  the 
reminiscence  of  Shakespeare,  Henry  viii,  iii,  2,  371, 
in  Darley's  Thomas  d-Becket, 


i84     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Through  them  he 
Burst  soon,  as  I  shall !     If  at  last  he  falls, 
He  falls  in  splendour, — and  all  men  must  die  ! 

The  poet  was  too  skilful  to  do  this  often.  His  skill  was 
the  greater  part  of  his  art.  Rather,  we  refer  to  the 
songs  in  his  Sylvia,  or  The  May-Queen — 


and 


Here  be  pansies  just  a-blowing ; 
Here  be  lords-and-ladies  glowing ; 

Pearly  brow  and  golden  hair. 
Lips  that  seem  to  scent  the  air. 
Eyes  as  bright,  and  sweet,  and  blue. 
As  violets  fill'd  with  orbs  of  dew. 
O  fairest  ! 
O  rarest  ! 
Creature  of  no  mortal  birth  ! 

If  thou'rt  woman, 

If  thou'rt  human. 
Heaven  is  sure  outdone  on  earth. 

These  are  nearer  to  the  Elizabethan  convention — 
every  inspiration  decays  to  a  convention  when  its 
time-spirit  has  departed — than  simple  verbal  imitations. 
They  are  nearer,  too,  to  Tennyson's  first  period,  to  his 
*  airy,  fairy '  '  rare,  pale  '  creatures,  feeding,  not  on 
Paradisal  dew,  but  on  the  distilled  fragrance  of  that 
essence.  The  new-old  mysticism  abounded  in  this 
self-involved  Irishman's  brain,  and  absorbed  in  the 
end  his  powers  of  independent  observation.  In  his 
earliest  poem  he  had  declared  : 

I'm  framed,  the  fool  of  sensibility ! 
I  cannot  see  a  young  flow'r  i'  the  grass 
Smile  at  my  foot  which  kills  it  in  its  prime. 
And  yet  not  think  of  undeserved  death. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832        185 

This  was  a  product,  less  of  pure  emotion,  than  of  emotion 
derived  through  Burns  and  Wordsworth  from  records 
of  feeling  stored  in  books  : 

I  cannot  look  ascaunt  the  mighty  deep. 
Shaking  the  firm  strand  with  its  plangent  waves, 
And  cry  *  't  is  good  in  faith ',  or  '  sooth  't  is  fair ', 
But  my  whole  spirit  rushes  through  my  eyes. 
And  mingles  with  the  motion  of  the  flood. 
And  bhnd  tumultuations  of  the  main. 

Here  the  falseness  and  artificiality  are  betrayed  as  much 
in  the  language  as  in  the  thought.  '  Ascaunt ',  '  plan- 
gent ',  '  sooth  ',  and  the  heavy  '  tumultuations  '  are 
furniture,  not  language.  And,  plainly,  it  is  not  Barley's 
spirit  which  rushed  through  Barley's  eyes,  but  the  ghost 
of  Shelley's  insight,  (from  Stanzas,  written  in  Dejection 
near  Naples)  which  stared  from  Barley's  vacant  orbits : 

Nor  yet  subsides,  with  the  subsiding  sea, 
But  tasks  invention  to  out-measure  nature, 
And  puts  imagination  to  the  stretch 
In  framing  vast  ideas  of  the  Deluge, 

But  when  invention  had  achieved  this  pseudo-Eliza- 
bethan labour,  the  issue  would  still  have  been  nil.  It 
was  not  for  the  sake  of  '  vast  ideas  of  the  Beluge  ' 
that  the  sea-captains  of  Elizabeth  fared  boldly  across 
the  deep,  and  inspired  her  poets  at  home.  Their  letter, 
not  their  spirit,  was  revived  by  these  poets  of  hectic 
romance  ;  and  The  Quarterly  reviewer  who  pointed 
out  the  insincerity  of  Tennyson's  testament  (in  one  of 
these  poems  of  1830), 

Come  only,  when  the  days  are  still. 
And  at  my  headstone  whisper  low. 
And  tell  me  if  the  woodbines  Mow, 


i86     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

was  not  wholly  unjust  in  his  attempt  to  cover  the 
plaintive  prettiness  with  ridicule.  The  juvenilia  of 
Tennyson  are  redeemed  by  fifty  years  of  greater  poetry 
(1842-92).  Darley  died  in  1846,  leaving  but  a  few 
fine  songs  to  be  dug  out  from  his  closet-dramas,  and 
recent  pious  endeavours  to  place  him  in  the  succession 
of  British  poets  are  likely  to  prove  unavailing. 


XI. 

Lovell  In  Beddoes — it  may  have  been  heredity,  but  it  was 

^  °®''  more  probably  environment,  and  his  intrusions  into 
liberal  politics  in  England,  Switzerland  and  Germany — 
we  come  to  a  stronger  writer,  though,  perhaps,  not  to  a 
more  consistent  poet.  At  least  one  of  his  lyrics  is 
great  poetry,  without  deduction  or  apology^.  It  is 
not  '  sicklied  o'er '  with  the  pale  cast  of  any  other  age 
of  thought,  or  of  any  single  thinker  ;  and  the  like 
criticism  applies — though  its  objects  are  not  as  supreme 
— to  one  or  two  more  of  Beddoes's  fragments.     He 

1  Dream-Pedlary  : 

If  there  were  dreams  to  sell, 

What  would  you  buy  ? 
Some  cost  a  passing  bell, 
Some  a  light  sigh.  .  .  . 

Prof.  Saintsbury  {A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  2nd 
edition,  Macmillan,  1901,  p.  115)  writes  in  the  same  sense  : 

'  The  author  of  such  things  .  ,  .  attains  to  that  small  and  disputed 
.  .  .  class  of  poets  who,  including  Sappho,  Catullus,  some  medieval 
hymn-writers,  and  a  few  moderns,  especially  Coleridge,  have,  by 
virtue  of  fragments  only,  attained  a  higher  position  than  many 
authors  of  large,  substantive,  and  important  poems '.  In  expressing 
a  similar  opinion,  I  am  glad  to  quote  this  authority. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         187 

possessed  imgaination,  too ;  a  little  derivative,  perhaps, 
and  a  little  self-conscious,  but  bold  and  direct  enough 
to  strike  an  original  note  at  its  impact  on  experience. 
It  would  be  pedantic  to  try  to  trace  to  purer  sources 
such  a  passage  as  this  from  Death's  Jest-Booh  (first 
completed  in  1826,  and  constantly  revised  ;  published 
posthumously  in  1850)  : 

How  strange  it  is  that  I  can  live  today ; 

Nay,  look  like  other  men  who  have  been  sleeping 

On  quiet  piUows  and  not  dreamt !     Methinks, 

The  look  of  the  world's  a  he,  a  face  made  up 

O'er  graves  and  fiery  depths ;    and  nothing's  true 

But  what  is  horrible.     If  man  could  see 

The  perils  and  diseases  that  he  elbows, 

Each  day  he  walks  a  mile ;    which  catch  at  him. 

Which  fall  behind  and  graze  him  as  he  passes ; 

Then  would  he  know  that  Life's  a  single  pilgrim, 

Fighting  unarmed  among  a  thousand  soldiers. 

It  is  this  infinite  invisible 

Which  we  must  learn  to  know,  and  yet  to  scorn, 

And,  from  the  scorn  of  that,  regard  the  world 

As  from  the  edge  of  a  far  star. 

It  is  not  quite  lucid  or  exact,  but  the  new  perception  is 
there  which  the  literature  rising  to  maturity  was  to 
learn  to  express.  Beddoes's  latest  editor,  Mr.  Ramsay 
Colles,  is  eager  to  discover  the  '  germ-theory  '  in  the 
central  lines  of  this  passage,  as  he  discovers,  probably 
enough,  Herbert  Spencer's  Principles  of  Biology  and 
Haeckel's  Evolution  of  Man  in  other  passages  in  this 
drama  : 

Had  I  been  born  a  four-legged  child,  methinks, 
I  might  have  found  the  steps  from  dog  to  man. 
And  crept  into  his  nature, 

and 


i88     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

There's  lifeless  matter ;    add  the  power  of  shaping, 
And  you've  the  crystal :    add  again  the  organs, 
Wherewith  to  subdue  the  sustenance  to  the  fonn 
And  manner  of  one's  self,  and  you've  the  plant : 
Add  power  of  motion,  senses,  and  so  forth. 
And  you've  all  kinds  of  beasts ;    suppose  a  pig : 
To  pig  add  reason,  foresight,  and  such  stuff. 
Then  you  have  man.  .  .  . 

And  so  forth.  The  wonder  of  this  kind  of  writing  has 
been  over-praised  in  Tennyson,  who  certainly  poured 
the  material  into  more  shapely  vessels.  Beddoes,  a 
physician  by  training,  reminds  us  of  Erasmus  Darwin 
in  a  later  age.  Literature  has  more  concern  with  the 
philosophy  of  life  than  with  the  history  of  physiology. 
It  notes  a  hint  of  Robert  Browning  in  the  poetic  form, 
and  it  notes,  more  significantly,  Beddoes's  prophecy 
of  a  further  exploration  of  the  unknown  as  a  condition 
precedent  of  faith,  and  his  yet  more  acute  prescience 
of  the  inadequacy  of  such  knowledge  to  displace  or 
replace  faith.  This  is  new,  and  true,  in  English  litera- 
ture, and  it  pointed,  however  remotely,  to  a  firm  foothold 
for  belief  amid  the  shifting  experiments  of  current 
politics  and  thought.  If  dogmatism  was  to  leap  into 
the  maelstrom,  this  counsel  of  hope  was  on  its  lips. 

The  credit  of  Beddoes's  insight  is  shared  with  Tenny- 
son, who,  in  another  early  poem,  remodelled,  as  a  part- 
answer  to  the  searchings  of  his  own  heart — and,  by 
extension,  of  the  heart  of  his  age — the  Greek  myth 
of  Paris  and  (Enone.  The  plea  of  Pallas  (Knowledge) 
in  (Enone  (1832),  with  which  the  reader  should  compare 
In  Memoriam  cxiv,  is  touched  by  the  same  perception 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         189 

that  illuminates  our  first  extraet  from  Death's  Jest- 

Booh  : 

Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power. 

To  live  by  law. 
Acting  the  law  we  live  by  without  fear ;  .  .  . 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence. 

Oh  !  rest  thee  sure, 
That  I  shall  love  thee  well  and  cleave  to  thee. 
So  that  my  vigour,  wedded  to  thy  blood. 
Shall  strike  within  thy  pulses,  like  a  God's, 
To  push  thee  forward  thro'  a  life  of  shocks. 
Dangers  and  deeds,  until  endurance  grow 
Sinew'd  with  action,  and  the  full-grown  will 
Circled  through  all  experiences,  pure  law, 
Commeasure  perfect  freedom. 

So  Beddoes  once  more  : 

I  have  a  bit  of  Fiat  in  my  soul. 

And  can  myself  create  my  little  world. 

It  is  not  a  fully  assured  message.  It  lingers  obscurely 
in  the  neutral  region  between  science  and  art.  But 
this,  at  least,  we  may  say  :  if  Beddoes  had  pubUshed 
the  Jest-Book  at  the  time  that  he  wrote  it,  contemporary 
criticism  would  have  found  it  hard  to  foretell  whether 
he  or  Tennyson  was  to  utter  the  soul  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  '  nothing's  true  but  what  is  horrible  ', 
and  Beddoes  died,  a  suicide,  at  forty-six.  At  that 
date,  in  that  dim  suspense,  a  new  '  criticism  of  life  ' 
for  men's  guidance,  enlightenment,  and  inspiration, 
was  not  attempted  by  the  poets.  Carlyle,  as  we  saw, 
did  attempt  it,  as  Wordsworth  and  the  elder  poets 
had  applied  ideas  to  their  own  day.  The  Recluse  {The 
Excursion)  was  to  have  been  a  new  Pope's  Essay  on 


igo     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Man,  taking  to  the  credit  of  man's  account  his  further 
increase  of  knowledge  with  its  deeper  obligation  on 
conduct.  Keats,  if  he  had  lived,  might  have  applied  it, 
or  Byron,  restored  by  Greece.  But  Tennyson,  who 
took  their  place,  distrusted  Keats's  '  Beauty '  and 
Byron's  '  Humanity '  alike.  His  poem.  The  Palace 
of  Art,  is  instructive  at  this  point.  He  was  vaguely 
sensitive  to  the  call.  He  wrote  CEnone  and  The  Two 
Voices,  as  Beddoes,  too,  in  certain  passages,  struggled 
upwards  to  the  light.  But  Beddoes  perished  apraktos, 
and  Tennyson — till  1840,  at  any  rate,  which  sets  the 
present  limit  to  our  inquiry — shrank  from,  or  felt 
unequal  to,  the  whole  issue. 

Read  The  Two  Voices  carefuUy  (and  finally,  in  this 
context),  and  his  unconscious  evasion  will  be  clear.  It 
was  the  choice  of  the  times,  not  the  man.  The  man's 
contribution  was  contained,  the  individual  note  suppUed, 
in  Tennyson's  personal  conservatism  and  the  instinctive 
conformity  of  his  class.  It  was  possible,  but  only 
barely  possible,  to  enter  the  gates  of  the  East.  The 
safe  alternative  was  to  dwell  in  the  light  of  the  setting 
sun.  The  heat  had  departed  from  its  beams  ;  the 
energy,  and  the  stimulus  to  energy.  But  the  colours 
were  deepening  in  the  firmament.  Hence  the  rich 
lights  and  tones  of  Tennyson's  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical. 
Hence  Darley's  hollow  emotion,  and  the  fiery  vacancy 
of  Beddoes,  and  hence  the  language  of  poetry,  em- 
broidered Uke  the  tapestry  of  the  sky. 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         191 


Xll. 

Other  writers  in  this  age,  who  similarly  missed  the 
big  note,  may  be  passed  more  rapidly  in  review. 

Winthrop  Mack  worth  Praed  (1802-39)  was  a  W.  M. 
graceful  trifler  in  Trash  (1833),  as  he  called  one  volume  ^^^  ' 
of  his  verses.  Eton  and  Trinity,  Cambridge,  had 
trained  him,  and  his  light  and  elegant  scholarship 
flowed  easily  from  a  pen  which  was  never  blunt  or 
dipped  in  gall.  His  vers  de  societe  are  perfect  in  their 
kind.     They  need  not  otherwise  detain  us. 

Thomas  Hood  (1799-1845),  a  humourist  by  need  Thomas 
rather  than  by  choice — '  a  lively  Hood  for  a  livelihood  ', 
as  he  jested  it — ,  had  more  in  common  with  his  age, 
and  has  nearer  claims  on  posterity.  His  fame  as  a 
punster  is  well  merited.  He  raised  punning  to  a  fine 
art,  and,  if  he  had  not  the  deftness  of  Praed — the  ex- 
quisite tact  of  social  knowledge — he  possessed,  in  a 
higher  degree,  the  deeper  tact  of  common  sympathy. 
Even  his  fun  struck  chords  to  which  men's  heart- 
strings reverberate.  His  own  ill-health  and  ill-fortune 
seemed  to  mellow  his  nature,  and  to  touch  his  drollest 
fancy  with  stray  notes  from  the  music  of  humanity. 
The  '  Uvelihood  '  pressed  him  very  closely.  His  sense 
of  what  the  public  wanted  compelled  him,  in  his 
magazines  and  annuals,  to  separate  the  strands  of  his 
talent  into  pure  humour  or  pure  pathos.  The  Parental 
Ode  to  his  son  is  a  kind  of  mosaic  of  the  two,  fashioned 
in  alternate   lines. .  The  familiar  Sorig  of  the  Shirt,  a 


192     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

genuine  song  of  the  times,  is  simply  pathetic.  The 
Lament  for  the  Decline  of  Chivalry  is  a  type  of  simple 
burlesque.  In  A  Retrospedive  Review  we  see  the 
union  of  both  strands,  and  not  their  mere  juxtaposition. 
There  are  puns  to  tickle  the  ear — '  some  sugar  in  the 
cane ',  '  no  satis  to  the  jams ' — ,  but  the  theme  of  the 
passage  of  boyhood  mingles  light  with  shade,  and 
awakens  comedy's  '  thoughtful  laughter  '.  Above  all, 
perhaps,  Thomas  Hood  was  a  master  of  wistful  emotion  : 

I  remember,  I  remember, 
The  house  where  I  was  bom, 
The  httle  window  where  the  sun 
Came  peeping  in  at  mom. 

It  is  of  songs  like  this  that  George  Herbert,  the  seven- 
teenth-century divine,  must,  we  feel,  have  been  thinking 
when  he  wrote  '  A  verse  may  find  him  who  a  sermon 
flies  '.     It  does  not  need  the  moral  ending  to  Hood's 

stanzas 

— But  now  't  is  httle  joy- 
To  know  I'm  farther  off  from  heav'n 
Than  when  I  was  a  boy — 

to  attune  his  readers  to  his  sentiment.  The  moral 
was  already  in  the  mood,  pathetic  rather  than  passionate, 
fanciful  rather  than  imaginative,  which  gives  suitable 
expression  to  an  unaspiring  age. 


xm. 

Other         Robert    Browning,    despite    the     date     (1833)     of 
"   "■  Pauline,  belongs  to  the  Victorian  age.     Here,  omitting 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         193 

Richard  Henry  (Hengist)  Home  (1803-44),  who 
published  an  '  epic '  poem,  Orion,  at  the  price  of  a 
farthing,  and  omitting,  too,  Richard  Harris  Barham 
(1788-1845),  whose  Ingoldshy  Legends  are  hardly  as 
funny  as  they  were — perhaps  because  the  fun  was  so 
positive — ,  we  come  to  a  little  group  of  writers  character- 
istic of  a  period  of  transition.  The  dull  time  overtaking 
pure  hterature,  the  discouragement  of  imaginative 
methods  at  the  centre  of  affairs,  the  need  of  an  effort 
to  enforce  them,  and  the  comparative  futility  of  making 
it,  shunted  a  certain  class  of  writers  on  to  branch- 
or  loop-  lines.  The  driving-power  was  there,  and  the 
movement,  and  the  scenery  at  the  wayside,  but  the 
sense  of  a  goal  was  wanting.  There  was  no  remoter 
object  or  destination,  no  '  universal '  setting  for  the 
'  particular '  route.  An  attractive  author  in  this 
class  was  George  Borrow  (1803-81)  whose  travels 
on  the  Continent  and  study  of  Continental  tongues 
were  turned  to  good  account  in  a  series  of  works  which 
started  the  literature  of  vagabondage.  His  literary 
interests  were  as  promiscuous  as  the  hospitality  which 
he  practised  when  he  settled  down  at  home,  and  his 
Bihle  in  Spain  and  other  books  are  delightful  examples 
of  their  kind.  Miss  Mitford  (1786-1855),  a  writer  of 
forgotten  poems  and  plays,  is  remembered  for  her 
sketches  of  Our  Village,  a  kind  of  travel-book  round 
her  own  home,  full  of  whim,  and  fancy,  and  brightness. 
William  Barnes  (1800-86),  the  Dorsetshire  poet, 
cultivated  his  native  dialect ;  and  Robert  Stephen 
Hawker  (1803-75),  farther  West,  likewise  confined 
13 


194     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

to  a  locality  his  celebration  of  '  domestica  facta  '  in 
Cornish  Ballads  and  Other  Poems.  W.  E.  Aytoun 
(1813-65),  joint-author  with  Sir  Theodore  Martin 
of  the  clever  Bon  GauUier  Ballads,  Douglas  Jerrold 
(1803-57),  playwright  and  wit,  and  Thomas  Gordon 
Hake  (1809-95),  a  serious  poet,  would  have  to  be 
added  to  this  record,  which  might  be  indefinitely 
extended,  if  mere  talent  increased  the  growth  of  art. 


XIV. 

Summary*  So  we  come,  through  assurance  and  suspense,  to 
the  end  of  this  difficult  period.  A  path,  faltering, 
perhaps,  but  as  clear  as  the  clues  allow,  has  been  found 
through  the  maze  of  writing  produced  in  the  fifteen 
years  of  which  1832  is  the  centre.  Dates  are  reconciled 
with  facts  by  historians  rather  than  by  history.  But 
the  choice  of  1832  as  the  centre  of  a  Uterary  cycle 
may  claim  a  twofold  significance.  As  the  death-year 
of  Scott,  it  looks  back  on  the  great  period  of  Romance. 
As  the  birth-year  of  Reform,  it  looks  forward  to  the 
great  period  of  Democracy.  The  problem  of  the  next 
half  century  is  how  to  reconcile  the  two  ;  how  to  give 
soul  to  the  positive  and  brain  to  the  imagination  ; 
how  to  make  the  real  spiritual,  and  the  spiritual  real, 
and  so  to  complete  the  work  of  intellectual  liberty. 

Before  examining  this  work,  we,  too,  concluding 
this  book,  may  look  backwards  for  a  moment  from 
the  year  of  transit,  1832.     The  results  of  the  Reform 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         195 

Act  were  irrevocable ;  its  social  and  moral  gains. 
A  force  was  added  to  social  life  ;  the  moral  horizon 
was  widened.  The  older  writers  had  done  their  parts — 
Crabbe,  Burns  and  Wordsworth  in  their  several 
degrees.  Jane  Austen  had  etched  her  pictures  of 
middle-class  society.  Scott  had  founded  his  sanctions 
in  history.  But  henceforward — here  was  the  difference 
— the  inclusion  of  the  fresh  material  became  a  common- 
place of  letters.  Philosophy,  poetry  and  fiction  had  to 
reckon  with  the  new  order  from  the  start.  The  mere 
technical  revolt  from  the  literary  standards  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  merged  in  a  genuine  rejection 
of  the  principles  from  which  they  sprang. 

Consider,  for  instance,  in  the  light  of  the  Reform  1733: 

1832 

Act  of  1832,  the  inner  meaning,  and  not  only  the 
outward  form,  of  Pope's  Essay  on  Man,  which  was 
published  in  1733.  Measure  the  force  of  the  famous 
line,  more  often  quoted  than  understood,  '  The  proper 
study  of  mankind  is  Man  '.  Did  it  raise  or  degrade 
men's  power  of  moral  and  social  improvement  ?  If 
mankind  had  properly  studied  man,  in  the  sense  in- 
tended by  Pope,  would  any  reform  have  been  enacted 
during  the  next  hundred  years  ?  What  is  the  relation 
of  Pope's  formula  to  the  '  high  argument '  of  Words- 
worth in  The  Recluse, 

How  exquisitely  the  individual  Mind 
(And  the  progressive  powers  perhaps  no  less 
Of  the  whole  species)  to  the  external  World 
Is  fitted ;   and  how  exquisitely  too — 
Theme  this  but  little  heard  of  araoni?  men — 
The  external  World  is  fitted  to  the  Mind, 


196     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

or  of  Carlyle  in  Sartor  Resartus,  or  of  Tennyson  in 
CEnone,  or  of  others  to  whom  we  shall  come — of  George 
Meredith,  for  example,  in  Outer  and  Inner — ,  and  of 
most  of  the  greatest  thinkers  of  the  nineteenth  century  ? 
These  are  the  questions,  or  some  of  them,  suggested 
by  the  literary  contrast  between  1733  and  1832.  For 
Pope  meant  something  like  this  :  Divine  order  must 
be  accepted  as  a  whole  ;  no  sane  purpose  is  served 
by  opposing,  or  seeking  to  overthrow,  the  estabhshed 
order  of  things  in  any  department  of  nature.  The 
way  of  salvation  lies,  not  in  adapting  '  order '  to  cir- 
cumstances, but  in  justifying  circumstances  by  referring 
them  to  '  order  '  : 

All  nature  is  but  art,  unknown  to  thee 
(that  is,  nature's  seeming  inequalities  are  parts  of  the 
constructive  Artist's  design) ; 

All  chance,  direction,  whicli  thou  canst  not  see ; 
All  discord,  harmony  not  understood ; 
A  partial  evil,  universal  good 

(that  is,  nature  is  always  right ;  pain,  sufiering,  '  in- 
justice ',  and  all  other  so-called  ills  are  only  the  illusion 
of  half-knowledge)  : 

And,  spite  of  pride,  in  erring  reason's  spite, 
One  truth  is  clear,  whatever  is,  is  right. 

Keats  railed  at  the  form  of  these  verses — from  the 
Essay  on  Man — ,  but  the  Revolution  in  Paris  and  the 
Reform  Act  in  England  are  signal  instances  of  rebelUon 
against  its  spirit.  In  the  eyes  of  the  revolutionaries 
and  reformers,  it  was  no  longer  impious  or  foolish 
to  refuse  to  subscribe  to  Pope's  dogma.    His  Universal 


THE  TRANSIT  THROUGH  1832         197 

Prayer  found  no  echo  in  an  age  when  the  conceptions 
of  piety  and  wisdom  had  been  enlarged  beyond  the 
compass  of  his  survey.  Religion  and  philosophy,  it 
was  obvious,  would  have  to  test  the  new  conceptions, 
and  hterature  and  art  to  interpret  them  through 
mediums  remote  from  vulgar  error.  The  new  time 
was  to  hold  the  higher  faith,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  braver 
faith,  that  the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  God, — in 
religion,  the  sanction  of  theology,  with  a  Uberal  move- 
ment in  the  Church  ;  in  politics,  the  sanction  of  power, 
with  democracy's  advance  ;  in  art,  the  sanction  of 
beauty  ;  in  philosophy,  the  sanction  of  truth  ;  and, 
in  all,  by  fearless  inquiry. 

Literature  is  preoccupied  for  awhile  with  this  re- 
construction of  faith  ^.  How  far  the  builders  were 
well-inspired,  whether  every  stone  was  truly  laid, 
what  corner-stone,  if  any,  was  rejected,  and  how  much 
remains  undone  ere  the  new  temple  is  complete,  are 
questions  still  awaiting  solution,  which  the  following 
book  may  elucidate.  The  present  instalment  is  com- 
pleted.    England  has  passed  through  1832. 

^  It  may  be  on  account  of  such  preoccupation  that  drama 
practically  ceased.  The  dramatic  form  (in  all  theatres  since  the 
Attic,  and  with  the  possible  exception  of  Faust,  which  is  really 
epic  in  character)  has  never  been  suitable  for  the  presentation 
of  '  divine  '  and  human  relations. 


view, 


BOOK    III 

THE  VICTORIAN  AGE,  1837-1900 

§  1.  KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF, 
i. 

A  con-  /^^  *^®  opposite  page  we  attempt  to  exhibit  by 
^r„"°  ^-^  concentric  tables  the  names  and  dates  of  the 
chief  writers  who  rendered  the  Victorian  age  so  extra- 
ordinary a  flowering-time  in  EngHsh  literature.  They 
found  the  material  ample,  and  endued  it  with  every 
kind  of  shape.  In  fiction,  theology,  philosophy,  poetry 
and  criticism  occur  some  of  the  greatest  names  which 
adorn  any  age  in  any  country,  and  there  is  this  mark  to 
distinguish  them  from  similar  groups  in  other  countries, 
that  their  rise  is  not  to  be  associated  with  a  definite 
authority — such  as  the  Universities  constitute  in  Ger- 
many, or  the  Academy  in  France — ,  but  was  spontaneous, 
local,  and  occasional  in  its  area  of  distribution,  and 
displayed  the  common  feature  of  national  inspiration. 

The  whole  people  was  moving  to  self-expression. 
Literature  was  only  one  aspect  of  the  general  stirring 
and  awakening.     A  new  stream  of  thought  was  being 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  199 

poured  through  the  land,  to  which  all  channels  of  in- 
tellect became  tributary.  Ideas,  fertilizing  faculties, 
were  blown  on  the  wind.  They  passed  and  re-passed 
imperceptibly.  Theologians  wrote  novels.  Historians 
wrote  books  on  theology.  Poets  and  critics  exchanged 
parts.  Charles  Kingsley,  rector  of  Eversley,  was  the 
author  of  Westward  Ho  !  The  author  of  The  Expansion 
of  England — Seeley's  most  suggestive  lectures — wrote, 
anonymously,  Ecce  Homo.  Froude  wrote  The  Nemesis 
of  Faith.  Matthew  Arnold,  poet  and  critic,  wrote 
essays  on  God  and  the  Bible.  Huxley  descended  from 
science,  and  Gladstone  from  statecraft,  into  the  theo- 
logical arena.  Charles  Dodgson,  the  mathematician, 
was  '  Lewis  Carroll '  of  the  Alice  books.  Ideas,  fer- 
tilizing faculties,  sprang  to  expression  in  all  quarters. 
They  compelled  the  variety  of  expression  which  is  so 
remarkable  a  feature  of  the  age. 

Yet   this   diversity   can   be   viewed   under   a   single  The 
common  aspect.    We  have  said  that  the  literature  of  Move- 
this  age  was  distinguished  from  that  of  other  countries  ™®^*- 
by  its  spontaneity  of  origin.     The  wind  blew  where  it 
hsted,  and  the  seeds  of    Hterature  were    sown.     But 
there  is  one  exception  to  this  statement.     A  definite 
stream  of  thought  proceeded  from  Oxford  University, 
and  especially  from  Oriel  College,  the  last  of  whose 
greater  sons,  the  late  Mr.  Cecil  Rhodes,  has  recently 
brought  so  many  changes  into  the  life  of  the  University 
by  the  effect  given  to  the  terms  of  his  will.     With  this 
we  are  not  concerned,  but  rather  with  the  older  Oriel, 
of   which  Keble   and  Newman,   Pusey  and  Matthew 


conflict. 


200     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Arnold  were  fellows,  with  Manning  at  Merton,  Wilber- 
force  at  AU  Souls,  and  Jowett  at  Balliol,  or  even 
with  an  older  Oriel  still,  that  of  Copleston  and  Whateley  ^, 
whence  came  the  Oxford  Movement  and  the  '  ruinous 
wrath  '  which  divided  knowledge  and  belief. 
The  M.r]uiv  aeihi,  dia — it  would  need  the  canvas  of  Homer 

and  the  sweep  and  range  of  epic  verse  appropriately 
to  depict  this  conflict,  in  which,  as  of  old,  gods  took 
part,  or  were  claimed  by  votaries  as  partizans,  and  in 
which  the  picturesqueness  of  the  fighting,  and  the  hard 
blows  given  and  returned,  tended  partly  to  disguise 
the  actual  purpose  of  the  fray.  There  was  Disraeli's 
brilliant  choice  of  the  side  of  the  angels,  not  the  apes. 
There  was  Huxley's  famous  retort  to  Bishop  Wilberforce 
at  Oxford  2.  There  are  a  hundred  episodes  of  con- 
troversy to  be  disinterred  from  the  burnt-out  embers 
in  the  Quarterly  and  other  reviews.  But  we  are  writing 
an  essay  in  criticism,  not  a  history  of  polemics  as  such, 

^  An  attractive  account  of  these  earlier  fellows  of  Oriel  (the 
*  Noetics  ',  as  they  called  themselves)  has  recently  been  issued 
under  the  title  of  Pre-Tractarian  Oxford,  by  Rev.  W.  Tuckwell 
(Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  1909). 

*  At  the  British  Association  Meeting,  I860.  The  Bishop  had 
asked  if  it  was  '  through  his  grandfather,  or  his  grandmother  that 
he  claimed  his  descent  from  a  monkey '.  Huxley,  exclaiming  to 
the  man  next  him,  Sir  B.  Brodie,  the  physician,  '  the  Lord  hath 
delivered  him  into  mine  hands  ',  replied  to  the  scientific  argument 
with  eloquence  and  force,  and  then  retorted  to  the  eflFect  that  he 
would  feel  less  shame  in  recalling  his  descent  from  an  ape  than  from 
'  a  man — a  man  of  restless  and  versatile  intellect — who,  not  content 
with  success  in  his  own  sphere  of  activity,  plunges  into  scientific 
questions  with  which  he  has  no  real  acquaintance,  only  to  obscure 
them  by  an  aimless  rhetoric,  and  distract  the  attention  of  his  hearers 
from  the  real  point  at  issue  by  eloquent  digressions  and  skilled 
appeals  to  religious  prejudice.' 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  201 

and,  accordingly,  we  are  more  concerned  with  tendencies 
than  with  details. 

What  was  the  meaning  of  it  all,  the  actual  purpose 
of  the  fray  ?  A  glance  back  may  help  us  at  this  point. 
The  new  schoolmaster  was  abroad.  There  were  forces 
at  work  in  human  thought  which  could  not  be  exhibited 
on  a  screen,  to  which  no  names  could  be  attached,  and 
of  which  the  Hving  tjrpes  of  fiction  were,  as  yet,  an 
inadequate  expression.  The  positive  sympathies  which 
resulted  in  Acts  of  Education  and  Reform,  in  improved 
conditions  of  labour  and  the  better  housing  of  the 
poor,  corresponded  to  an  intellectual  awakening,  which 
found  its  reflection  in  Uterature,  dimly  at  first,  through 
clouded  glass,  in  novelists  and  poets  to  whose  writings 
we  shall  come.  It  is  the  function  of  Hterature  to 
interpret  an  age  to  itseK,  to  apply  imagination  to  ex- 
perience, to  discover  the  unifying  purpose  which  con- 
secrates the  diverse  means,  and  to  render  sub  specie 
ceternitatis  the  new  temporal  possessions  of  men.  How 
far  Victorian  literature  has  succeeded  in  discharging 
its  function  will  be  apparent  later  on.  Judged  by 
this  supreme  test,  its  work  is  not  yet  complete.  All 
the  resources  of  the  age  have  not  yet  been  interpreted 
by  art.  This  legacy  is  bequeathed  to  the  new  century. 
Moreover,  arrested  movements — movements  of  reaction, 
not  reform — were  likewise  rendered  in  art-forms  by 
painters  and  poets,  and  the  beauty  of  these  self-con- 
tained art-products  (which  were  more  easily  produced 
in  proportion  to  their  distance  from  the  centre  of  ad- 
vance) interrupted,  and  partially  confused,  the  direct 


202     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

inspiration  of  art  and  letters.  These  schools  of  indirect 
taste  achieved  a  more  exquisite  perfection  inasmuch 
as  they  consciously  retired  from  the  central  struggle 
of  their  times.  But  in  certain  novelists  and  poets,  in 
certain  painters  and  critics,  we  shall  reach  the  more 
impassioned  seers  and  the  more  ambitious  interpreters. 
They  are  not  always  lucid.  They  do  not  always  prophesy 
smooth  things.  Their  expression — whatever  medium 
they  employ — is  not  always  adequate  to  their  insight. 
But,  according  to  the  vision  within  them,  and  to  the 
light  in  which  they  walked,  they  drew  out  the  truth 
underlying — they  displayed  in  their  service,  or  relation, 
to  that  truth — the  maniiold  endeavours  and  experi- 
ments of  an  innovating  age. 
The  new  Meanwhile,  in  what  sort  were  these  experiments, 
earning.  ^^^  these  new  possessions  mentioned  above  ?  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  as  we  saw,  had  completed  in  1833  his 
new  Principles  of  Geology.  Thomas  Robert  Malthus 
(1766-1834),  in  an  earUer  generation,  had  issued  in 
1798  his  famous  Essay  on  Population,  and,  though  the 
influence  of  his  economics  is  inconsiderable  to-day, 
his  biological  researches  were  of  prime  importance  to 
the  new  learning.  Robert  Chambers,  the  Edinburgh 
publisher,  issued  in  1844  his  (anonymous)  Vestiges 
of  Creation.  Charles  Darwin  (1809-82)  ^  was  ready 
in  the  same  year  with  a  sketch  of  his  theory  of  evo- 

*  Grandson  of  Erasmus  Darwin  (1731-1802),  phjrsician  and 
evolutionist  (old  style),  author  of  Loves  oj  the  Plants ;  and  son  of 
Dr.  Darwin,  F.R.S.  The  Fellowship  of  the  Royal  Society  has  also 
been  conferred  on  three  of  Darwin's  sons,  including  his  biographer, 
Dr.  Francis  Darwin,  and  Sir  George  Darwin,  K.C.B. 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  203 

lution  by  natural  selection,  and  published  in  1859  the 
first  edition  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  based  on  his 
own  experiments,  and  on  those  of  Dr.  Alfred  Russel 
Wallace  (6.  1823),  after  correspondence  with  Lyell  and 
others.  John  Tyndall  (1820-93)  and  Thomas  Henry 
Huxley  (1825-95),  who  became  fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1852  and  1850  respectively,  were  associated 
in  1860  in  a  volume  on  The  Glaciers  of  the  Alps.  Hux- 
ley's Zoological  Evidences  as  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature 
followed  in  1863,  and  was  succeeded  by  special  studies 
in  comparative  anatomy  and  physiology  ;  Tyndall  in- 
vestigated the  properties  of  light,  sound  and  heat,  and 
his  Contributions  to  Molecular  Physics  were  collected 
in  1872. 

These  men — and  Darwin  and  Huxley  especially — 
did  more  than  continue  the  tradition  of  natural  philo- 
sophy set  by  Sir  Humphry  Davy  (1778-1829)  and 
Michael  Faraday  (1791-1867),  for  example.  Davy 
invented  the  safety -lamp  (1815)  and  Faraday  dis- 
covered the  principle  of  magneto-electricity  (1831).  Like 
Hargreaves,  Arkwright  and  George  Stephenson,  in  an 
older  generation,  their  researches  led  them  to  inven- 
tions, beneficial,  mechanically,  to  society,  the  utmost 
opposition  to  which  would  be  industrial  in  kind.  The 
full  force  of  that  opposition  was  felt  in  1768,  when,  as 
we  saw  in  another  context  1,  Hargreaves's  house  and 
machinery  were  wrecked  by  dispossessed  hand-labourers, 
and  it  was  kiUed  by  Stephenson's  ridicule  of  the  problem 
of  the  steam-engine  and  the  cow.  The  new  investi- 
1  Page  19. 


204  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

gation  of  nature,  directed  to  knowledge,  not  to  its  appli- 
cation, came  home  to  '  men's  business  and  bosoms ' 
with  far  deeper  force.  No  wrecked  and  reparable 
machinery  would  wipe  out  the  dispossession  of  beliefs 
established  immemorially  in  the  heart.  Nature's 
facts,  observed  and  tabulated,  and  summarized,  where 
legitimate,  to  conclusions — '  I  only  give  facts,  and  such 
conclusions  from  them  as  seem  to  me  fair '  (Darwin,  in 
a  letter  to  Lyell) — ,  had  to  meet,  not  the  angry  fears  of 
a  superseded  regiment  of  industry,  but  the  bitter 
hostility  of  disbanded  soldiers  of  faith.  Theology 
armed  against  geology,  the  augurs  of  heaven  against 
the  searchers  of  earth. 


u. 

The  old        'Science   does  not  know  its  debt  to  imagination', 
faith.       ,j,j^.g    g^^.^g    ^j    j^^jpj^    ^^j^^    Emerson    (1803-82), 

the  American  philosopher,  may  fitly  stand  at  the 
front  of  the  present  section  of  our  inquiry.  For,  if 
science  had  known  its  debt,  how  much  bitterness  would 
have  been  avoided,  how  much  good  time  would  have 
been  saved,  and  how  much  pure  literature  might  have 
replaced  the  cross-breed  hterature  of  controversy.  And, 
conversely,  if  poets  and  theologians — the  trustees  of  the 
imaginative  method  —  had  recognized  their  debt  to 
science,  how  much  more  quickly,  and  with  how  much  less 
suffering,  would  reaction  and  obscuration  have  retreated 
to  the  fastnesses  where  superstition  masquerades  in  the 
robe  and  with  the  sceptre  of  imagination. 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  205 

In  retrospect,  the  evil  side  is  uppermost.  The 
ignored  debt  must  be  paid.  The  longer  the  day  of 
reckoning  is  put  off,  the  more  difficult  becomes  recon- 
cilement. History  marches  from  symboUsm  to  sjonbol- 
ism,  and  the  successive  optimism  of  the  symbolists  is 
the  sole  evidence  we  possess  of  the  reluctant  but  in- 
destructible reaHty  which  eludes  the  imitative  types. 
The  Sphinx,  gazing  across  the  desert  in  the  light  of  the 
setting  sun,  across  mounds  which  were  once  living 
cities  and  ruins  which  once  resounded  with  the  love  and 
worship  of  mankind,  expresses,  not  the  triumph  of 
human  skill  and  engineering,  stiU  less  the  triumph  of 
stone  :  it  expresses  the  infinite  yearning  of  an  im- 
prisoned idea,  an  imponderable  spirit  uncrushed  be- 
neath tons  of  vainglorious  masonry,  an  elusive  reality 
mocking  the  ultimately  inevitable  dissolution  of  its 
most  powerful  material  rival.  It  derides  the  trophies 
of  dead  kings  laid  at  the  feet  of  dead  gods  ;  it  re- 
bukes human  petrifaction  defying  nature's  putrefaction. 
The  husk  has  survived  the  flame.  To  us,  reviewing 
the  nineteenth  century  under  the  aspect  of  this  struggle 
between  knowledge  and  belief,  the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx 
recurs  with  insistent  and  urgent  meaning.  Did  they, 
too,  our  high  priests  of  religion,  viewed  as  formula 
rather  than  as  function,  build  their  temple  too  soUdly, 
in  the  hope  of  imprisoning  faith  ?  Did  they,  too,  dis- 
credit imagination  by  raising  a  monument  in  her  name  ? 
Did  they,  too,  seek  to  capture  the  untameable,  and  to 
arrest  the  process  of  time  ? 

Each  will  answer  these  questions  for  himself,  accord- 


2o6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ing  to  the  significance  which  he  attaches  to  the  High 
Church   and   the   Broad   Church   movements,   to    the 
defections  to  Rome,  and  to  the  increasing  strength  of 
reason.     To  some  perhaps  it  may  seem  that  certain 
aspects  of  life  to-day — the  prominence  of  '  positivist ' 
aims  among  the  leaders  of  the  working  classes,  the  lapse 
of   strenuous   ideals,    the    abandoned   safeguards   and 
shibboleths,  and  the  vague  material  aspirations  clouded 
by  socialist  talk  which  confuse  politics  and  society — 
are  not  indirectly  to  be  traced  to  the  delusion  fostered 
by  theologians  as  to  the  identity  of  dogma  and  religion. 
They  insisted  that  truth,  observed,  must  be  clipped  to 
tradition,  revealed.    Divine  genesis,  eternal  damnation, 
rewards  and  punishments,  the  immaculate  conception, 
and  salvation  by  faith  were  to  stand  unmoved  and  un- 
moveable  in  the  age  of  advancing  knowledge.     The 
pity  was  that,  when  these  dogmas  tottered,  they  shook 
the  foundations  of  better  things.     '  The  vulgar  only 
'scaped,  who  stood  without ',  and  even  these  might  not 
wholly  escape  the  noise  and  rubble  of  the  ruin  of  the 
noblest  ideal  ever  offered  to  the  contemplation  of  man- 
kind.    Take  the  evidence  of  contemporary  writers — 
Mr.  Gosse's  mid- Victorian  memories,  when  his  father, 
Philip    Henry    Gosse    (1810-88),    genuinely    thought 
that  he   had  reconciled  geology  with  Genesis  :     '  In 
my  heart   the   artificial   edifice   of  extravagant  faith 
began  to  totter  and   crumble '  ^ ;    take  Tess's  meeting 
with  the  glory-monger  who  painted  the  countryside  red 
with   texts   of   damnation    and    burning :    '  The   last 
^  Father  and  Son,  a  Study  of  Two  Temperaments.    Heinemann,  1907. 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  207 

grotesque  phase  of  a  creed  wliicli  had  served  mankind 
well  in  its  time  '  ^ — ,  and  a  portion  of  the  evidence  is  at 
hand. 


m. 

As  Davy  and  Faraday  preceded  the  era  of  Darwin  Phases 
and  Huxley,  so  John  Keble  (1792-1866)  and  E.  B.  Pusey  °J^§?,t_ 
(1800-82)  proved,  after  the  '  Noetics  ',  the  authors,  or 
forerunners,  of  the  Tractarian  or  High  Church  move- 
ment, which  included  John  Henry  Newman  (1801-90), 
Richard  Hurrell  Froude  (1803-36),  Henry  Edward 
Manning  (1808-92),  WUHam  George  Ward  (1812-82) 
and  Henry  Parry  Liddon  (1829-90),  in  their  various 
degrees  of  nearness  and  distance. 

These  form  the  Extreme  Lefts  of  the  two  parties  to 
the  fray  in  the  camps  of  science  and  faith.  The 
Scientific  Right  is  composed  of  such  leaders  of  rational 
philosophy  as  John  Stuart  Mill  (1806-73),  George 
Henry  Lewes  (1817-78)  and  Herbert  Spencer  (1820- 
1903),  with  a  strong  line  of  extension  in  the  domain 
of  the  philosophy  of  science,  including  Henry  Longue- 
ville  Mansel  (1820-71)  in  metaphysics.  Sir  Henry 
Maine  (1822-88)  in  jurisprudence,  Henry  Sidgwick 
(1838-1900)  in  ethics,  and  others  of  recent  date. 

On  the  Religious  Right  may  be  placed  the  champions  of 
Broad  Church  Christian  Socialism,  Frederick  Denison 
Maurice    (1805-72),    Charles   Kingsley    (1819-75)    and 

^  Tesa  of  the  Z)'  Urbervilles,  a  Pure  Woman.  By  Thomas  Hardy. 
11.  12. 


2o8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Thomas  Hughes  (1823-96).  Among  those  who  ex- 
tended their  thought  in  the  domain  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion  were  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  Dean  of  West- 
minster, and  Richard  Chenevix  Trench,  Archbishop  of 
Dublin,  Benjamin  Jowett,  Master  of  Balliol,  and  Mark 
Pattison,  Rector  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford  ;  Matthew 
Arnold,  Seeley  and  Froude  in  their  theological  excur- 
sions from  the  realms  of  criticism  and  history ;  and,  it 
might  almost  be  said,  every  prominent  churchman  and 
every  eminent  man  of  letters  of  the  middle- Victorian  era. 
So  infectious  was  the  air  of  the  Oxford  Movement. 

With  these  names  to  gaide  us,  and  keeping  broadly  in 
view  these  clues  to  their  strategical  positions,  we  may 
examine,  perhaps,  certain  phases  of  the  conflict.  Take, 
as  a  single  instance  from  the  most  moderate  camp,  the 
notice  in  July,  1871,  of  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man  in 
The  Quarterly  Review.  The  writer  afEected  to  rise  from 
it  '  with  mingled  feelings  of  admiration  and  disap- 
pointment '.  He  sought  for  '  some  consolation  for  the 
injurious  effects  which  this  work  is  likely  to  produce  on 
many  of  our  half -educated  classes ',  and  he  hoped  that 
'  Mr.  Darwin  may  yet  live  to  furnish  us  with  another 
work,  which,  while  enriching  physical  science,  shall  not, 
with  needless  opposition,  set  at  nought  the  first  principles 
of  both  philosophy  and  religion '.  Reading  this  review 
as  it  was  written,  and  taking  Darwin  as  a  type,  and 
Darwinism  as  a  science,  rather  than  a  contribution  to 
it,  the  whole  moral  obliquity  of  nineteenth-century 
thought  is  contained  in  these  characteristic  utterances. 
It  invented  the  '  opposition '  which  it  deplored.    Let 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  209 

knowledge  increase,  the  reviewer  said  in  effect ;  let 
it  '  enrich ' — the  word  had  a  tang — the  particular 
fields  which  it  cultivates ;  but  it  must  trail  across  the 
sky  of  its  bold  and  free  observation  a  few  of  the  illu- 
minated texts  which  weaker  brethren  interpose  between 
the  vision  and  the  seer.  Its  May-Queens  must  die  to 
slow  music. 

And  note  that  it  was  not  the  theologians  who  urged 
the  obvious  plea,  '  Complete  the  half-education  as  a 
first  condition  of  knowledge '.  Newman  wrote  the 
Idea  of  a  University — an  eloquent  and  a  generous  appeal 
from  the  Koman  Catholic  university  in  Dublin — ,  but 
it  was  Huxley,  the  coiner  of  '  agnosticism ',  and  the 
protagonist  of  scientific  method,  who  spared  time 
from  his  morphological  researches  to  sit  on  the  original 
committee  of  the  School  Board  for  London  (1870),  and 
who  lent  his  valuable  aid  to  its  early  dehberations.  In 
his  zeal  to  increase  knowledge,  the  man  of  science  was 
too  wise  to  divorce  philosophy  from  practice.  Huxley 
voted  for  the  resolution  in  favour  of  religious  teaching, 
proposed  by  the  late  W.  H.  Smith,  afterwards  leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  which  is  still  (1909)  the 
actual  basis  of  rehgious  instruction  in  the  majority 
of  State-aided  primary  schools.  He  supported,  accord- 
ing to  his  son's  memoir,  '  what  appeared  to  be  the 
only  workable  plan  under  the  circumstances,  though 
it  was  not  his  ideal ',  and  it  is  precisely  this  power  of 
adaptation  to  environment  which  was  lacking  in  the 
theologians'  camp.  The  hungry  sheep  looked  up,  and 
were  not  fed.  They  were  still  asked  to  acquiesce  in 
14 


210     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  medieval  consolation  of  philosophy  for  aspirations, 
sorrows,  and  a  joy-hunger  of  a  new  era  of  reform. 
The  Tractarian  movement  was  inadequate,  hke  its 
Pre-Raphaelite  analogue  in  art,  and  Rome  formed  the 
retreat  of  Newman,  Manning  and  Patmore.  The 
Broad  Church  movement  was  inadequate,  despite  its 
eloquence  and  courage  ;  not  the  least  good  it  achieved 
was  Newman's  Apologia  jyro  Vita  Sua  in  reply  to 
Kingsley's  attack.  Meanwhile,  if  faith  failed  in  its 
synthesis,  science  never  made  the  attempt.  Science, 
80  called,  or  so  miscalled,  in  opposition  to  faith,  did  not 
aim  at  a  moral  sanction.  Darwin  consciously  resigned 
it  to  his  imperious  appetite~Ior  facts.  '  My  mind ',  he 
said  in  his  Recollections  (1876),  '  seems  to  have  become 
a  kind  of  machine  for  grinding  general  laws  out  of  large 
collections  of  facts,  but  why  this  should  have  caused  the 
atrophy  of  that  part  of  the  brain  alone  on  which  the 
higher  tastes  depend,  I  cannot  conceive.  The  loss  of 
these  tastes  is  a  loss  of  happiness,  and  may  possibly 
be  injurious  to  the  intellect,  and  more  probably  to  the 
moral  character,  by  enfeebling  the  emotional  part  of 
our  nature '.  This  double  spiritual  failure  is  deeply 
to  be  deplored.  Neither  '  science  '  nor  '  imagination  * 
alone — each  ignoring  its  debt  to  the  other — availed  to 
effect  the  reconciliation  which  complete  enlightenment 
demands.  The  mind  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
been  enlarged  by  the  conclusions  of  science,  and  has 
effected,  partially,  its  enfranchisement  from  the  bondage 
of  ecclesiastical  authority.  But  true  intellectual 
freedom  awaits  its  rebirthjium  the  marriage  of  reas(m 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  211 

with  faith.  Till  thiese  two  shall  be  united  and  identified, 
the  soul  of  man  is  still  enslaved.  There  are  still  more 
gardens  to  be  won,  till  '  our  half-educated  classes ' 
complete  their  education  at  last. 


IV. 

Before  passing  to  this  literature  of  reconcilement, 
with  its  meed  of  harmony  and  form,  a  brief  survey  must 
be  made  of  the  actual  literature  of  conflict. 

It  is  not  all  pure  literature.  This  test,  strictly  appUed,  The 
would  rule  out  the  scientific  monographs,  much  of  the  iJepf^age 
literature  of  the  faith-and-reason  controversy,  and  no 
few,  indeed,  of  the  Oxford  Movement  books  and 
pamphlets.  The  Origin  of  Species,  for  example,  and 
The  Descent  of  Man,  though  they  belong  to  literature 
in  the  sense  that  the  French  Revolution  belongs  to  it — 
in  a  motive  sense,  that  is  to  say,  affecting  literary  in- 
spiration, and  estabhshing  precedents  (or  positions) 
from  which  human  thought  cannot  go  back — ,  were  not 
in  themselves  works  of  art  of  a  literary  kind.  But 
artem  acquirunt  eundo.  Sincerity  lent  them  form,  and 
enthusiasm  imparted  its  glow,  and,  in  respect  to  the 
religious  writings  especially,  the  material  was  plastic 
from  the  start. 

John  Keble,  who  was  born  in  Shelley's  year,  was  one  Keble. 
of  Matthew  Arnold's  most  distinguished  predecessors 
in  the  chair  of  poetry  at  Oxford,  and  published  the 
lectures  of  his  professorate — De  PoeticcB  Vi  Medica — 


212     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

in  1841.  For  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  (1836  to 
1866)  he  administered  a  Hampshire  vicarage,  from 
which  he  occasionally  sent  forth  a  volume  of  sermons 
or  addresses  afire  with  the  simple  righteousness  which 
was  the  keynote  of  his  aims.  An  assize  sermon  on 
national  apostacy  which  he  preached  in  1833  is  commonly 
regarded  as  the  starting-point  of  the  Oxford  Movement 
towards  a  refined  ecclesiastical  authority,  and  his  seven 
Tracts  for  the  Times  were  among  the  earliest  of  the  series. 
But  it  is  for  his  appHed  theology,  rather,  perhaps,  than 
for  his  theories,  that  Keble  claims  affection  to-day. 
His  Christian  Year,  of  1827,  and  his  Lyra  Innocentium 
of  twenty  years  after,  contain  the  pure  essence  of  the 
faith  recommended  by  a  Kempis  and  the  saints,  and 
uphold  an  ideal  of  conduct,  too  monastic,  it  may  be, 
to  convince,  the  appeal  of  which  is  well-nigh  irresistible. 

R.  H.  Hurrell  Froude,  the  historian's  elder  brother,  was  a 
roude.  p^pQ  ^f  Keble  at  Oxford,  and  lived  long  enough,  though 
he  died  at  thirty-four,  to  write  three  of  the  Tracts  for 
the  Times,  and  to  collaborate  with  Newman  in  the 
Lyra  A'postolica.  His  brother,  James  Anthony  Froude 
(1818-94),  to  whom  we  shall  recur  in  a  later  section, 
wrote,  in  1844,  a  life  of  Neot,  the  saint,  for  a  series 
edited  by  Newman,  and  published,  in  1849,  The  Nemesis 
of  Faith,  a  copy  of  which  had  the  honour  of  being 
publicly  burned  by  William  Sewell  (1804-74),  who 
had  renounced  the  Tractarian  doxies. 

Pusey.  In  Edward  Bouverie  Pusey,  who  was  elected  to  an 
Oriel  fellowship  in  1822,  we  reach  a  leader  of  the  Oxford 
Movement,   who   never   swerved   for   sixty   years — ^he 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  213 

died  in  1882 — from  his  endeavour  to  found  the  doctrines 
of  the  Church  of  England  on  the  writings  of  the  AngHcan 
fathers.  He  contributed  doctrinal  treatises  to  the 
Tracts  for  the  Times,  and  was  among  the  most  active 
of  the  controversialists.  He  was  charged  with  heresy 
in  1843,  he  took  part  in  ecclesiastical  trials  for  heresy, 
and  in  1862  he  arraigned  Jowett  for  heretical  teaching. 
His  monument  exists  in  Pusey  House,  and  his  work 
and  influence  are  abiding. 

Newman  became  a  fellow  of  Oriel  in  the  same  year  Newman, 
as  Pusey,  but  resigned  in  1832,  in  order  to  visit  Italy. 
His  Lyra  Apostolica  was  written  in  Rome,  and  his  fine 
hymn,  '  Lead,  kindly  Light ',  was  a  part  of  the  argosy  of 
his  travels.  On  his  return  in  1833,  he  commenced 
his  Tracts  for  the  Times,  of  which  Tract  XC  (1841)  con- 
firmed the  unorthodoxy  of  the  Tractarians  in  the  eyes 
of  Anglican  defenders.  He  was  already  the  author 
of  several  Anglo-Catholic  monographs,  and  he  spent 
three  years  of  his  Hfe  (1842-45)  in  a  monastic  retreat, 
at  the  close  of  which  he  was  received  into  the  Church 
of  Rome.  He  estabhshed  an  oratory  at  Birmingham, 
became  rector  of  the  CathoUc  University  at  Dublin,  and 
was  created  a  cardinal  in  1879.  To  Kingsley's  attack 
on  Newman's  veracity  brief  reference  has  been  made, 
and  the  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua  was  very  much  more 
than  a  reply.  With  Loss  and  Gain :  the  Story  of  a 
Convert,  told  in  the  guise  of  fiction,  it  remains  the 
clearest  and  most  sincere  of  religious  biographies  in  the 
English  language.  Newman's  style  had  an  imaginative 
power,  which  added  considerably  to  his  influence.     It 


214     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

glows  with  the  ardour  of  his  mind.  It  is  persuasive 
where  suasion  is  required,  rapierlike  where  thrusts  are 
necessary,  and,  above  all,  deeply-laid  in  a  spiritual 
soil.  Its  flowers  are  redolent  of  heaven  ;  they  open, 
not  to  our  sun,  but  to  the  light  of  another  world.  He 
added  to  the  resources  of  English  prose  the  strength 
of  distance  and  of  mystery  employed  on  appropriate 
material,  thus  completing  De  Quincey's  aim  with  far 
more  than  De  Quincey's  inspiration.  There  are  prayer 
and  fasting  in  his  style,  as  well  as  in  his  life.  It  has 
a  virtue,  at  its  best,  which  can  only  be  described  as  at 
once  virile  and  virginal.  Its  force  was  never  used  for 
demagogy,  its  virginity  was  rarely  claustral.  Yet 
these  two  qualities  of  this  pious  man  of  eloquence 
transfused  nearly  everything  which  he  wrote. 
Oxford  Cardinal  Manning,  whose  conversion  occurred  in 
Group,  jggj.  j)^  Ward— 'Ideal  Ward',  as  he  was  called— 
whose  Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church  appeared  in  1844, 
and  who  edited  The  Dublin  Review  from  1863  to  1878  ; 
Canon  Liddon,  who  wrote  a  Life  of  Pusey,  and  whose 
sermons  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  were  an  attraction  of 
mid- Victorian  Sundays  ;  Bishop  Wilberforce,  of  Oxford 
and  Winchester,  who  presided  over  the  revision  of  the 
New  Testament ;  these,  and  others,  must  not  detain  us 
in  a  criticism  of  literature.  Nor  can  we  pause  very 
long  at  the  names  of  the  more  popular  writers — Jowett 
(1817-93),  whose  paper  on  'The  Interpretation  of 
Scripture '  in  the  famous  Broad  Church  manifesto, 
the  Essays  and  Reviews  of  1860,  is  less  important  to-day 
than  his  translations  of  Plato  and  Thucydides,  and  his 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  215 

work  and  influence  at  Balliol  from  1870  till  his  death  ; 
Pattison  (1813-84),  in  early  life  a  Puseyite  and 
Newmanizer,  Rector  of  Lincoln  from  1861,  and  the 
writer  of  his  own  Memoirs  (up  to  the  date  of  that 
appointment),  which  have  the  curious  value,  more 
difficult  to  define  than  to  appreciate,  attaching  to  the 
literature  of  introspection.  A  little  more  remote  from 
Oxford  was  Dean  Stanley  (1815-81),  biographer  of 
Thomas  Arnold  (Rugby's  famous  headmaster,  1795- 
1842),  and  author  of  several  series  of  lectures  on  ecclesi- 
astical history,  of  which  he  held  the  Oxford  chair.  As 
Dean  of  Westminster  (1864-81),  his  work  at  the 
Abbey  was  the  counterpart  of  Liddon's  at  St.  Paul's, 
and  his  support  of  Ward  and  Jowett  and  his  defence 
of  Essays  and  Reviews,  as  these  episodes  of  controversy 
arose,  display  the  trend  of  his  opinions.  John  WilHam 
Colenso  (1814-83),  writer  of  mathematical  text-books, 
and  afterwards  Bishop  of  Natal  (1853),  belongs  to  the 
same  busy  age,  and  combined  the  criticism  of  Scripture 
with  missionary  and  educational  work  among  the  Zulus. 
Colenso  combined  them  so  effectively,  and  with  so 
liberal  a  conception  of  criticism,  that  he  was  excom- 
municated by  the  Bishop  of  Natal,  though  the  courts 
re-instated  him  in  the  see.  He  was  one  of  the  foremost 
thinkers  among  the  theologians  of  his  time. 

Educational  activity,  it  should  be  added,  was  a  pre- 
occupation of  this  epoch.  Jowett  and  Pattison  took 
part  in  it,  on  University  Commissions  and  otherwise, 
and  it  attracted  as  large  a  share  of  public  interest  and 
time  as  the  religious  controversy  itself.     Thus  Trench 


2i6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

(1807-86)  suggested  the  Oxford  English.  Dictionary 
and  was  virtually  the  originator  in  this  country  of  a 
special  class  of  literature,  possessing  considerable  charm 
— ^the  folklore  of  words.  He  treated  words  as  living 
entities,  under  the  aspects  of  morality  and  beauty,  and 
so  raised  philology  from  a  science  to  an  art.  His 
Notes  on  the  Miracles  and  Parables  and  a  moderate 
number  of  good  sonnets  are  also  to  be  written  to  his 
credit.  Thus,  too,  Richard  William  Church  (1815-90), 
afterwards  Dean  of  St.  Paul's — ^to  be  distinguished 
from  the  Rev.  A.  J.  Church  (6.  1829),  author  of 
many  tales  from  many  histories — ,  was  one  of  Newman's 
constant  friends,  a  consistent  member  of  the  High 
Church  party,  and  a  writer  on  literature  and  rehgion. 
Thus,  too,  F.W.  Farrar  (1831-1903),  Dean  of  Canterbury, 
scholar,  philologian,  and  author  of  school-stories,  among 
which  Eric,  or  Little  hy  Little  was  once  held  in  high  esteem ; 
thus  Canon  Ainger  (1837-1904),  lover  of  Charles  Lamb, 
and  other  eminent  divines. 
F  D  From  this  list,  which  becomes  a  mere  catalogue,  as 

Maurice,  ^g  approach  the  present  date,  we  go  back  to  the  writers 
whom  we  placed  on  the  right  of  the  phalanx  of  religion. 
The  first  of  these  is  F.  D.  Maurice,  who  edited  an 
Education  Magazine,  held  the  chair  of  English  hterature 
at  King's  College,  London,  and  was  associated  with 
the  foundation  of  Queen's  College  (1848).  He  was 
accused  of  heterodoxy  by  The  Quarterly  Review  (1851), 
and  confirmed  the  charge  in  the  opinion  of  the  authorities 
at  King's  by  his  Theological  Essays  (1853).  He  founded 
the  Working  Men's  College,  and  became  its  first  head, 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  217 

and,  late  in  life,  he  returned  to  Cambridge  as  professor 
of  moral  philosophy.  In  these  happier  days,  when 
the  echoes  of  controversy  are  dead,  Maurice  is  gratefully 
remembered  for  his  social  and  educational  work,  as  a 
true  Christian  democrat — or  Christian  Socialist,  to  use 
the  accepted  term — ,  and,  through  his  writings  on 
philosophy  and  sacred  subjects,  for  his  powers  of 
abstract  argument.  He  is  hardly  yet  adequately 
honoured  as  a  kind  of  Plato  of  Christianity.  If  Socrates 
had  been  raised  to  divine  rank  in  a  religion  of  Socrati- 
anity — and  it  became  '  the  religion,  not  of  the  masses 
in  general,  but  of  the  masses  of  the  educated '  ^, — 
Plato's  writings  would  have  taken  their  place  by  the 
side  of  the  PauUne  Gospel.  Maurice,  in  certain  respects 
of  style,  is  hardly  inferior.  His  works  distil  the  wisdom 
of  the  West,  and  their  heterodoxy  of  fifty  years  ago  is 
to-day  a  conservative  spirit  which  is  as  valuable  as  it 
is  deeply-reasoned.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  illustrate 
by  quotation  these  men  of  letters  who  were  '  religionists  ' 
first,  and  whose  literary  merit  is  sometimes  an  accident 
of  temperament.  But  Maurice,  like  Newman  among 
the  Tractarians,  is  one  of  the  masters  of  EngHsh  prose, 
and  the  following  passage  may  be  taken  as  typical  of 
his  style  : 

My  desire  is  to  ground  all  human  morality  upon  the 
relation  in  which  man  stands  to  God,  to  exhibit  what- 
ever is  right  and  true  in  man  as  only  the  image  and 
reflex  of  the  original  Righteousness  and  Truth.  I  can- 
not base  this  morality  upon  the  dread  of  some  future 
^  T.  Gromperz,  Oreck  Thinkers,  Murray,  ii.  244. 


2i8  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

punishments,  upon  the  expectation  of  some  future 
rewards.  I  believe  the  attempts  to  make  men 
moral  by  such  means  have  failed  always  ;  are  never 
more  egregiously  and  monstrously  failing  than  now. 
.  .  .  Morality  consists,  as  I  beUeve,  in  the  giving  up 
of  ourselves.  All  immorality  consists  in  self-seeking, 
self -pleasing,  self -glorifying.  Instead  of  giving  himself 
up  to  God,  man  seeks  to  make  his  God,  or  his  gods, 
give  up  to  him  ;  he  offers  sacrifices,  that  he  may  per- 
suade the  power  which  he  thinks  he  has  wronged  to 
exempt  him  from  the  punishment  of  his  wrong.  This 
is  man's  theology  ;  this  is  what  has  produced  all  the 
hateful  superstition  under  which  the  world  groans. 

Dedicatory  Letter  to  The  Doctrine  of  Sacrifice. 

Kingsley.  Charles  Kingsley,  two  of  whose  brothers  (George, 
1827-92,  and  Henry,  1830-76)  and  whose  niece, 
Mary  (1862-1900),  George  Kingsley's  daughter,  were 
likewise  writers  and  travellers,  became  rector  of  Eversley 
in  1844,  and  a  canon  of  Westminster  in  1873.  He  was 
the  first  lecturer  in  English  at  Maurice's  foundation. 
Queen's  College,  London,  and,  in  1860,  took  the  chair 
of  modern  history  at  Cambridge.  As  '  Parson  Lot ' 
he  wrote  Politics  for  the  People,  and  his  type  of  Christian 
Socialism  was  distinctly  more  militant  than  Maurice's. 
The  '  muscular  Christian '  idea  is  associated  with  his 
teaching.  Mainly,  it  was  expressed  in  romances, 
thus  bringing  us  back — for  the  first  time  since  faith 
took  the  field  against  knowledge — to  the  domain  of 
pure  literature.  The  finest  of  his  romances  is  the 
Elizabethan  Westward  Ho !,  but  Yeast,  Hypatia  and 
AUon  Locke — ^the  last  a  genuine  labour-novel — though 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  219 

a  Kttle  too  vehement,  or  '  muscular ',  are  very  worthy 
of  the  cause  for  which  he  stood,  and  Two  Years  Ago, 
published  two  years  after  the  Crimea,  is  not  much 
inferior  in  power.  The  roving  instinct  in  the  Kingsley 
blood,  which  Mary  Kingsley  was  most  fully  to  express, 
found  its  vent  in  her  uncle's  papers  on  sport  and  the 
open  air,  and  in  a  certain  vigorous  abandon  to  the  call 
of  the  winds  and  sea  which  is  of  the  essence  of  his  style. 
The  Water  Babies  (1863)  and  Glaucus,  studies  of  the 
seashore,  were  wholly  successful  experiments  in  child- 
and  nature-  lore  respectively. 

Lastly,  Thomas  Hughes  (1822-96),  a  County  Court  Hughes. 
judge,  who  succeeded  Maurice  as  head  of  the  Working 
Men's  College,  was  the  author  of  Tom  Brown's  School- 
days (1857),  a  vivid  study  of  Rugby  under  Arnold, 
which  no  later  story  of  school-life  has  dethroned  from 
its  supreme  place.  The  Oxford  sequel  (1861)  was  by 
no  means  as  happy,  and  Hughes  is  emphatically  among 
the  writers  who  live  by  the  merit  of  one  book. 


V. 

Finally,  in  the  realm  of  pure  knowledge,  as  distinct  Science 
from  that  of  faith,  the  works  of  Darwin  and  Tyndall  sophy.j 
cannot  detain  us  as  literature,  and  Huxley,  despite  a 
trenchant  style,  was  a  man  of  science  first  and  a  man 
of  letters  afterwards.  His  educational  papers  possess  per- 
manent value  ;  his  monograph  on  Hume  is  a  masterpiece ; 
and  he  was  impelled — or  attracted — to  take  a  some- 


220  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

what  copious  share  in  the  controversial  literature  of  his 
day,  the  bulk  of  which  is  historical  material.  His  part  in 
controversy  has  been  defined,  and  his  labours  in  the  cause 
of  elementary  education  have  been  mentioned,  nor  can 
they  be  overpraised.  Pure  learning  claims  the  rest. 
Herbert  The  extension  of  reason  to  rationalism,  and  the 
(1820-  apphcation  of  the  rational  sanction  to  ethics,  politics 
1903).  ajj(j  economics,  by  the  philosophers  of  this  age,  are 
likewise  beyond  the  survey  of  the  critic  of  pure  letters. 
Theirs  is  more  neutral  territory,  lying  between  literature 
and  learning.  Philosophic  Avriters,  if  distinguishable 
from  philosophers — Plato,  as  against  Aristotle — ,  have 
also  been  great  men  of  letters  ;  but  the  school-men, 
from  Aristotle  downwards,  belong  to  the  history  of 
thought,  and  are,  at  most,  but  foster-sons  of  hterature. 
So  Herbert  Spencer's  '  magna  instauratio ',  Baconian 
in  its  height  and  breadth,  but  missing  Bacon's  depth 
of  wisdom,  and  inamenable  to  Uterary  judgment — the 
man  was  a  mass  of  inamenities,  as  his  chapters  of  auto- 
biography 1  reveal — ,  must  be  left  to  the  province  which 
he  occupied,  and  in  which  he  was  dictator  rather  than 
prince.  The  comer-stones  of  his  vast  scheme  were 
First  Principles  (1861),  the  Classification  of  the  Sciences 
(1864)  and  Data  of  Ethics  (1879).  Round  his  stupendous 
scheme  of  a  synthetic  philosophy,  which  aimed  at  uni- 
fying knowledge,  and  at  explaining  humanity  in  the 
terms  of  evolution,  Spencer  built  a  series  of  monuments, 
founded  on  the  principle  of  individuaUsm,  the  total  im- 

^  An  Autobiography.    By  Herbert  Spencer.    2  vols.     Williams  & 
Norgate,  1904. , 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  221 

pression  of  which  is  somewhat  disappointing.  Spencer's 
'  absolute  ethics '  were  based  on  a  moral  criterion 
drawn  up  in  a  perfect  society.  The  egoism  and  al- 
truism were  to  coalesce  in  conduct  yielding  complete 
pleasure ;  and,  whatever  the  verdict  of  knowledge, 
literature  will  agree  with  the  leaders  of  the  idealistic 
revolt  in  modifying,  by  metaphysical  criticism,  and 
under  psychological  analysis,  Spencer's  evolutional 
conclusions  from  the  purely  logical  point  of  view. 

Mill,  who  was  Spencer's  senior,  and  whom  Spencer  John 
survived  by  thirty  years,  was  a  far  more  humane  j^n 
thinker.  He  devoted  his  best  work  and  talents  to  the  l^H^ 
construction  of  a  system  of  utilitarian  ethics,  thus 
following  Jeremy  Bentham  (1748-1832),  a  founder  of 
The  Westminster  Review,  to  which  Mill  was  a  constant 
contributor.  Mill's  System  of  Logic  (1843)  was  faithful 
to  the  inductive  method  of  contemporary  science,  with 
its  patient  investigation  of  phenomena.  His  studies 
of  Political  Economy  appeared  in  the  following  year, 
and  led  to  a  more  extensive  treatise  on  the  Princifles 
of  Political  Economy  in  1848.  These  works,  which  rank 
as  English  classics,  suffer  from  the  same  defect  of  under- 
rating the  influence  of  human  nature.  The  individual- 
ists reckoned  without  socialism,  and  British  moral 
philosophy  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
slow  in  learning  its  lesson  from  Continental  and  Trans- 
atlantic writers.  The  influence  on  Mill  of  Auguste  Comte, 
the  French  Positivist  philosopher  1,  and  the  inventor 

^  Positivism    may   briefly,    and    unscientifically,    be    defined    as 
Huxley's  agnosticism,  or  phenomenalism  (knowability  limited  by 


222     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  the  term,  if  not  of  the  science,  of  sociology,  proved 
considerable  in  later  life,  when  Mill  added  On  Liberty, 
Representative  Government  and  Utilitarianism  to  the 
longer  treatises  of  twenty  years  before.  Later  still, 
he  collected  from  reviews  a  number  of  Dissertations 
and  Discussions,  which  afford  very  interesting  reading. 
They  include  a  paper  on  '  Poetry  and  its  Varieties ', 
which  Herbert  Spencer,  for  all  his  learning,  could  never 
have  composed. 

Summary  It  is  not  practicable  to  pursue  these  notes  through 
all  the  philosophic  writers  who  belong  to,  or  are 
variants  of,  this  school.  There  was  Sir  William 
Hamilton  (1788-1856),  the  metaphysician,  some  years 
senior  to  Mill,  whose  philosophy  Mill  criticized, 
and  whose  logical  bent  he  appreciated.  There 
were  Alexander  Bain,  T.  H.  Green,  Henry  Sidgwick, 
Stanley  Jevons,  W.  K.  Cliiford,  and  the  living 
writers.  Professors  F.  H.  Bradley,  William  James  (of 
New  York),  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  J.  A.  Stewart,  Mr.  Ben- 
jamin Kidd,  and  others.  But  rich  as  the  age  has  been 
in  philosophers  and  writers  on  philosophy,  the  true 
direction  of  English  genius  has  taken  other  channels. 
Darwin  stands  alone  as  the  author  of  categories  of 
thought,  which  determine  the  very  processes  of  our 
minds.  Apart  altogether  from  the  value  of  his  incre- 
ment to  knowledge,  we  think  in  Darwinian  terms.  We 
are   all   intellectual   Darwinians,    whether   consciously 

Bense-perception)  plus  '  the  religion  of  humanity  ',  which  has  found 
eminent  disciples  in  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  (b.  1831)  and  others. 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF  223 

or  unconsciously.  But,  Darwin  excepted,  the  Victorian 
philosophers  hardly  rank  as  members  of  a  school.  The 
Oxford  Movement,  which  came  forth  from  Oriel,  bore 
witness  to  the  preoccupation  of  the  university  with 
religious  speculation.  Few  facilities  were  ofiered  to 
philosophers,  and,  though  certain  types  of  thinkers 
were  encouraged  to  reside  at  such  centres,  the  direct 
association  of  schools  of  thought  with  British  homes 
of  learning  has  not  been  a  characteristic  of  the  age. 

Our  philosophers  have  been  novelists  and  poets.  The 
age,  at  the  point  which  we  have  reached,  is  urgently  in 
need  of  refreshment.  It  needs  writers,  more  universal 
than  the  synthetists,  who  will  gather  to  an  harmonious 
whole  the  mingled  voices  of  their  times.  Reason  is  to 
be  a  function  of  faith,  and  faith  an  attribute  of 
reason.  A  spirit  must  be  breathed  into  intellect,  and 
wisdom  added  to  learning.  Literature,  we  feel,  must 
transcend  the  bounds  of  logical  inquiry,  and  shed  upon 
a  dry  land  the  heaUng  dews  of  imagination.  Science 
has  hberated  the  mind.  It  is  for  literature  to  make 
valid  the  new  resources. 


§  2.  TENNYSON. 

THOSE  who  look,  as  contemporaries  looked,  for  a 
complete  answer  in  Tennyson  are  likely  to  be 
disappointed.  More  than  any  writer  in  this  age,  he 
devoted  his  genius  to  the  conflict  between  knowledge 
and  beUef.  He  had  himself  a  scientific  mind,  to  the 
extent  of — if  not  beyond — a  talent  for  patient  observa- 
tion, and  he  was  always  sensitive  to  currents  of  opinion 
and  thought.  These  faculties  were  combined  with  a 
constant  conservative  purpose,  rooted  in  the  associations 
of  his  childhood,  and  confirmed  by  his  experience 
throughout  life.  The  stable  order  of  things  haunted 
him  well-nigh  '  like  a  passion '  ;  and  hence  came  his 
curious  reluctance  to  face  the  logic  of  facts. 

His  poetic  powers  developed  slowly,  but,  having  once 
reached  their  height,  they  were  maintained  evenly 
Poems  of  at  one  level.  He  accompanied,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
transit  through  1832  with  a  volume  of  poetry  more 
melodious  than  thoughtful.  In  the  following  year 
occurred  the  death  of  his  close  college-friend  and  in- 
tended brother-in-law,  Arthur  Henry  Hallam  (1811-33). 
This  bereavement,  his  son  reminds  us,  '  blotted  out 
all  joy  from  his  life,  and  made  him  long  for  death ' ; 
the  slow  process  of  recovery  from  '  such  a  first  friend- 


1842. 


TENNYSON  225 

ship  and  such  a  loss  helped  to  reveal  himself  to  himself, 
while  he  enshrined  his  sorrow  in  his  song '  ^.  For  ten 
years  thereafter  he  was  silent,  brooding  over  his  grief, 
and  fitting  its  moods  to  the  hints  and  echoes  of  the 
times.  Then,  1842,  he  issued  Poems,  in  two  volumes. 
The  first  volume  contained,  mainly,  reimpressa — ^revised 
versions  of  earUer  poems — ,  and  the  second,  mainly, 
new  pieces.  Among  these,  Ulysses,  Tithonus  and 
Locksley  Hall  were,  perhaps,  the  most  characteristic  of 
two  aspects  of  his  genius. 

The  idylls  of  Ulysses  and  Tithonus  aimed  at  rendering 
Greek  themes  in  the  terms  of  modern  understanding, 
and  were,  so  far,  Keats-hke  by  design,  with  an  added 
sensationalism  in  the  point  of  view.  Their  extra- 
ordinarily careful  workmanship  displayed  Tennyson's 
cultivated  power  of  steeping  the  senses  in  music,  half 
Miltonic  and  half  VirgiHan.  He  employed  the  metre  of 
blank  verse  to  induce  emotional  effects  of  a  partly  lan- 
guid, partly  august  beauty,  the  secret  of  which,  if  it  can  be 
analysed  at  all,  is  chiefly  to  be  traced  to  his  disposition  of 
consonants  and  vowels — ^his  exquisite  tact  for  sound — , 
to  his  variation  in  pauses,  and  to  his  choice  of  simple 
epithets.  We  can  give  but  the  barest  instances,  and  these 
are  necessarily  inadequate  to  effects  which  grow  clearer 
at  each  re-reading.    Note,  among  sound-arrangements, 

(1)  There  gloom  the  dark  broad  seas 

(2)  The  long  day  wanes  ;  the  slow  moon  climbs ;  the  deep 
Moans  round  with  many  voices 

1  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson :  a  Memoir.  By  his  son.  Macmillan, 
1897,  i.  109. 

IS 


226     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

in  both  of  -whicli  an  efiect  is  produced  by  sounds  falling 
like  heavy  sighs.  '  The  lights  begin  to  twinkle  from  the 
rocks ',  with  its  obvious  succession  of  sounds  vanishing 
suddenly  on  the  ear,  is  a  contrary  instance  of  Ug^reU 
likewise  taken  from  Ulysses.  Note,  too,  the  predomi- 
nant monosyllables  in  which  these  vowel-sounds  occur 
— a  very  Tennysonian  practice.  Skill  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  consonants  is  a  more  common  gift,  but  Tenny- 
son's alliteration  is  not  common.  '  There  lies  the 
port :  the  vessel  puffs  her  sail '  is  notable  for  the  '  p ' 
in  '  puffs '  picking  up  the  '  p '  in  '  port ',  as  well  as, 
more  subtly,  for  the  '  s  .  .  1 '  sound  repeated  from 
'  vessel '  in  '  sail '.  The  '  m  '  and  '  n  '  sounds  in  the 
couplet  just  above  ('  wanes  ',  '  moon  ',  '  climbs  ', 
'  moans  ',  '  round  ',  '  many  ')  are  combined  with  the 
vowel-variations.  As  an  instance  of  the  use  of  pauses 
we  may  take  four  consecutive  lines  of  this  poem  : 

Push  off,  I  and  sitting  well  in  order  smite 
The  sounding  furrows ;  |  for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  simset,  |  and  the  bars 
Of  all  the  western  stars  until  I  die.  | 

In  the  first  line  the  pause  occurs  at  the  end  of 
the  first  of  the  five  beats;  in  the  second,  between 
the  second  and  the  third  ;  in  the  third,  between  the 
third  and  the  fourth ;  in  the  fourth,  at  the  end  of 
the  fifth. 

Tennyson  is  full  of  these  subtleties,  of  these  technical 
feats  of  word-  and  sound-  craft,  affording  delight  to 
the  ear,  and  the  foregoing  indications  will  be  multiplied 
by  any  of  his  readers. 


TENNYSON  227 

Locksley  Hall,  the  third  poem  referred  to,  is  charac- 
teristic in  another  wise.  It  displays  the  popular 
presentment  of  current  tendencies  of  thought  which 
made  the  poet  for  more  than  fifty  years  the  most  readily 
quoted  of  EngUsh  writers.  The  verses  beginning  '  In 
the  spring ',  'As  the  husband  is,  the  wife  is ', 
'  Baby  lips  will  laugh  me  down ',  '  Men,  my  brothers, 
men  the  workers ',  '  Knowledge  comes,  but  wisdom 
lingers ',  '  Woman  is  the  lesser  man ',  '  Better 
fifty  years  of  Europe ',  and  others,  typify  Tennyson's 
genius  in  summing  up  philosophies  in  phrases. 

In  the  same  volume  (ii.  1842)  was  included  Love 
and  Duty,  a  brief  poem  in  blank  verse,  containing  the 
well-known  lines — from  '  Of  Love  that  never  found  his 
earthly  close '  to  '  Wait :  my  faith  is  large  in  time, 
And  that  which  shapes  it  to  some  perfect  end ' — , 
which  unhappy  lovers  have  always  recited  with  a  con- 
scious glow  of  moral  rectitude.  This  suspicion  of 
strvi  in  conduct,  this  shghtest  touch  of  veneer  overlying 
the  admirable  sentiment — a  sublime  primness,  so  to 
speak — ,  is  not  an  unusual  mark  of  Tennyson's  virtuous 
man,  from  Enoch  Arden  to  Arthur  himself.  Here,  too, 
we  meet  the  distinction  between  '  knowledge '  and 
'  wisdom ' — it  is  found  at  the  same  time  in  Locksley 
Hall — ,  which  was  used  to  more  passionate  purpose 
in  In  Memoriam,  cxii,  and  by  which  Tennyson  sought 
to  express  the  need  of  his  age  for  a  higher  power  of 
knowledge  than  mere  knowing.  But  the  power  of 
faith,  to  which  he  raised  it,  and  by  virtue  of  which  he 
discerned  the  '  perfect  end '  shaped  by  Time,  proved 


228     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

less  efl&cacious  at  closer  quarters.    To  this  slirinking 
we  shall  return. 
The  The  Princess,  a  Medley,  appeared  in  1847,  and  was 

rincess.  afterwards  extensively  revised.  Its  chief  charm  is  in 
its  songs  :  '  Come  down,  0  maid,  from  yonder  mountain 
height '  is  mentioned  in  another  context  (p.  246, 
infra)  \  '  Tears,  idle  tears '  is  quoted  in  full  below. 
The  argument  of  the  whole  poem,  amplified,  perhaps, 
from  the  couplet  in  Locksley  Hall,  beginning  '  Woman 
is  the  lesser  man',  is  not  very  enlightening  to-day. 
Little  is  added  to  social  ideals,  and  nothing  to  social 
practice,  by  the  melodious  musing  of  this  serio-comic 
medley. 
Tenny-  With  the  publication  of  The  Princess,  Tennyson's 

maturity :  apprenticeship  was  ended.  His  name  was  already  on 
the  Civil  List,  and,  when  Wordsworth  died  in  1850,  he 
was  appointed  with  general  approval  to  the  vacant 
poet-laureateship.  His  marriage  with  Miss  Emily 
Sellwood  had  taken  place  in  the  same  year.  He  retained 
the  laurel  till  his  death,  and  wore  it  more  sedulously 
than  Southey  and  Wordsworth,  his  predecessors  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Precisely  to  trace  its  influence  on 
his  material  and  style  would  carry  us  too  far  along  the 
line  of  speculation,  but  it  is  not  fanciful  to  say  that 
Tennyson's  friendship  with  Queen  Victoria — the  Queen 
herself  honoured  it  with  that  name — ,  though  he  pre- 
served throughout  the  privilege  an  independent,  almost 
unconventional  bearing,  reinforced  his  native  instinct 
towards  tame  and  safe  conclusions.  His  patriotism 
was  always  of  this  kind.     It  had  nothing  venturesome 


TENNYSON  229 

or  confident  in  its  haughty,  almost  regal,  reverence  of 
place,  and  ceremony,  and  order.  In  the  lines  of  1832, 
composed  in  the  metre  of  In  Memoriam,  Tennyson 
defended  his  love  of  England  as  '  a  land  of  settled 
government  .  .  ,  Where  freedom  slowly  broadens  down 
From  precedent  to  precedent ',  a  description  hardly  to 
have  been  expected  from  a  young  poet  of  the  England 
of  the  Reform  Act.  He  admitted  the  efl&cacy  of  change, 
but  bespoke  for  its  complement  so  much  patience  that 
fruition  might  be  indefinitely  postponed.  In  The 
Palace  of  Art  he  drew  that  moving  picture  of  an  EngHsh 
home,  'gray  twilight  pour'd  On  dewy  pastures,  dewy 
trees.  Softer  than  sleep — all  things  in  order  stored,  A 
haunt  of  ancient  Peace ',  which  symbolizes  his  love  of 
tradition.  It  is  to  be  compared  with  many  aspirations 
in  In  Memoriam  of  which  the  following  is  a  type  : 

A  love  of  freedom  greatly  felt. 
Of  freedom  in  her  regal  seat 
Of  England,  not  the  schoolboy  heat, 

The  blind  hysterics  of  the  Celt. 

The  same  note  is  heard  again  in  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  it  characterized  and  limited 
the  poet's  sympathies  throughout. 

There    is    a    courtliness  —  a    courtierliness  —  in    his  Idylls  of 
poetry  which   is   not  altogether  to  the    good.     It  in-    ^    *"^' 
fected  the  Idylls  of  the  King  with  a  sentimental  humour 
— a   kind  of   moral  mock  -  responsibility — which  made 
even  noble  deeds  too  flowery  : 

And  noble  deeds,  the  flower  of  all  the  world. 
And  each  invited  each  to  noble  deeds. 


230     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  ideal  was  pitched  impossibly  high.  Hardly  Shelley's 
love-sick  '  maiden  in  a  palace  tower '  could  have  asked 
for  floods  of  sweeter  music  than  Tennyson  poured  out  in 
these  pictures,  based  upon  Malory's  stirring  narrative. 
Five  well-known  calls  to  conduct  may  be  quoted  out  of 
many  familiar  examples  : 

(1)  Unfaith  in  aught  is  want  of  faith  in  all 

(2)  To  lead  sweet  lives  in  purest  chastity. 
To  love  one  maiden  only,  cleave  to  her. 
And  worship  her  by  years  of  noble  deeds 

(3)  Let  no  man  dream  but  that  I  love  thee  still 

(4)  We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it 

(5)  Ideal  manhood  closed  in  real  man 

These  passages,  and  passages  like  these,  which  abound 
in  the  Idylls,  were  written,  it  may  fairly  be  suggested, 
with  a  consciousness  of  the  laureate's  robe.  They  are 
ornate,  stately,  statuesque,  of  Leighton  rather  than  of 
Watts,  a  trifle  under-impassioned,  and  a  little  too  poUte 
to  be  true,  except  in  the  charmed  circle  of  a  court. 
In  Me-  At  the  date  of  his  marriage  and  appointment,  in  the 
middle  of  the  century,  1850,  Tennyson  issued,  anony- 
mously at  first,  his  most  ambitious  poem.  In  Memoriam. 
It  was  inscribed  to  the  memory  of  Arthur  Hallam, 
who  had  died  seventeen  years  before,  and  its  parts  had 
been  gradually  put  together — ^no  other  description  is 
so  suitable — during  the  interval  of  mourning.  The 
actual  expressions  of  bereavement : 

(1)  'Tis  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all  .  .  . 


TENNYSON  231 

(2)  My  guardian  angel  will  speak  out 

In  that  high  place,  and  tell  thee  aU  .  .  . 

and  other  plirases  more  appropriate  to  a  stricken  bride- 
groom than  to  a  man  of  forty  commemorating  an  early 
friend,  need  not  be  taken  too  literally,  and,  even  literally, 
should  not  repel  sympathy.  It  was  an  age  which 
exaggerated  signs  of  grief — Queen  Victoria's  letters  are 
full  of  them — ^without  affecting,  in  the  least,  men's 
powers  of  intellect  and  character.  Moreover,  the  sorrow 
of  In  Memoriam  is  general  rather  than  personal.  It 
typifies  human  bereavement,  and  is  subsidiary,  accord- 
ingly, to  the  main  purpose  of  the  poem — the  triumph 
of  faith  over  death. 

A  second  point  is  the  form  which  the  poem  assumed. 
Tennyson  himself,  a  little  consciously,  describes  its 
parts  {In  Memoriam,  xlviii)  as  '  brief  lays  of  sorrow 
bom ',  and  as  '  short  swaUow-flights  of  song,  that  dip 
Their  wings  in  tears,  and  skim  away '.  It  was  the 
poet's  thought  perhaps,  rather  than  his  sorrow,  as  he 
himself  avows,  which  dared  not  '  trust  a  higher  lay ', 
but  Tennyson  was  wisely  inspired  in  avoiding  the 
mistake  of  Philip  James  Bailey,  for  example,  who 
essayed  the  eagle-flight  of  Goethe  on  very  insecure 
pinions.  There  is  a  Trinity  monument  in  Vienna  which 
represents  clouds  in  marble.  The  material  contradicts 
the  form,  and  the  effect  is  top-heavy.  Tennyson,  the 
half-way  thinker,  was  almost  always  too  perfect  an 
artist  to  commit  this  mistake.  Occasionally,  he  gilds 
the  edges  which  Wordsworth,  for  instance,  would  have 
left  plain,  as  in  Enoch  Arden  contrasted  with  Michael ; 


232     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

but  his  art-instinct  seldom  betrays  him,  and,  certainly, 
in  In  Memoriam,  the  broken  poems  correctly  represent 
the  imperfect  and  personal  design. 

The  poem  belongs  to  its  age,  and,  in  less  skilful 
hands,  it  might,  conceivably,  have  perished  with  the 
circumstances  that  produced  it.  Its  beauty  saves  it 
from  this  fate,  the  elaborate  charm — ^with  the  labour 
concealed — which  the  greatest  word-artificer  in  English 
poetry  introduced  into  every  verse  and  every  phrase. 
In  no  instance  was  Tennyson  content  with  less  than 
complete  expression,  whether  in  nature-observation, 
especially  of  birds  and  flowers,  or  in  popular  renderings 
of  the  abstract  arguments  of  his  day.  So  simple  and 
lucid  is  his  language  that  the  pains  which  went  to 
fashion  it  are  overlooked,  at  least  till  we  study  the 
comparative  history  of  his  text,  with  his  patient  labour 
in  revision.  In  the  end,  his  challenge  to  thought 
was  rewarded  with  the  gift  of  expression.  The  new 
methods  of  science  were  endued  with  the  forms  of  art. 
A  philosophy  hardly  articulate  was  made  not  merely 
vocal  but  artistic.  Arguments  of  exceptional  difficulty 
were  sustained  at  the  height  of  poetic  style.  Pope 
himself,  in  his  pohshed  couplets,  never  surpassed  these 
feats  of  linguistic  exposition,  and  Pope  did  not  seek  to 
add  to  them  Tennyson's  emotional  appeal.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  following  few  lines  from  Pope's  Essay  on 
Mon,  and  measure  Tennyson's  achievement  by  comparing 
them  with  a  poem  from  In  Memoriam.    Pope  writes  : 

Self-love  thus  pushed  to  social,  to  divine, 

Gives  thee  to  make  thy  neighbour's  blessing  thine. 


TENNYSON  233 

Is  this  too  little  for  the  boundless  heart  ? 

Extend  it,  let  thy  enemies  have  part : 

Grasp  the  whole  worlds  of  reason,  life,  and  sense. 

In  one  close  system  of  benevolence : 

Happier  as  kinder,  in  whate'er  degree. 

And  height  of  bliss  but  height  of  charity. 

God  loves  from  whole  to  parts :  but  human  soul 

Must  rise  from  individual  to  the  whole. 

Gnomic  verse,  as  it  is  called — the  pcPitrv  most  alien 
to  lyric,  and  most  impersonal  in  inspiration — ,  could  not 
go  further  than  in  this  passage.  Volumes  of  ethical 
theory  and  of  social  philosophy  are  contained  in  it.  It 
is  deHvered  with  no  bias  save  of  intellect,  thus  irre- 
sistibly commanding  intellectual  admiration.  '  Happier 
as  kinder ',  for  instance,  is  a  phrase  minted  by  the 
mind,  conveying,  in  form  and  diction  ('  kind '  sum- 
marizing '  kin '),  all  the  resources  available  to 
the  poetic  art  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Now, 
read  these  lines  again,  and  turn  from  them  to  In 
Memoriam,  Iv  : 

The  wish,  that  of  the  living  whole 

No  life  may  fail  beyond  the  grave, 
Derives  it  not  from  what  we  have 

The  likest  God  within  the  soul  ? 

Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 

That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams  ? 
So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 

So  careless  of  the  single  life ; 

That  I,  considering  everywhere 

Her  secret  meaning  in  her  deeds. 
And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds 

She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear,  ... 


234     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all. 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope. 

Allowing  for  the  difference  between  tlie  stanza  and  the 
couplet — ^four  lines  with  two  rhymes  against  two  with 
one — ^is  there  not  the  same  felicity  of  phrase-making  in 
Tennyson  ?::  ia  Pope  ?  the  same  abihty  to  complete  an 
argument  in  a  phrase,  and  the  same  gnomic  power  : 
'  So  careful  of  the  type  she  seem^s ',  '  God  loves  from 
whole  to  parts  ',  and  so  forth  ? 

What  Tennyson  added  to  Pope  was  the  drenching 
personal  emotion.  '  /,  considering  everywhere ',  '  / 
stretch  lame  hands  of  faith ',  '  7  feel  is  Lord  of  all ', 
etc.,  replacing  the  '  boundless  heart '  and  the  '  human 
soul ',  and  the  generic  '  thou  '  of  the  Essay.  The  '  I ', 
Tennyson  might  say,  '  is  not  always  the  author  speaking 
of  himself,  but  the  voice  of  the  human  race  speaking 
through  him '  (Memoir,  i.  305) ;  but  it  is  always 
personal,  always  emotional.  It  kindles  a  lyrical  in- 
tensity on  the  chill  altar  of  the  intellect,  and  the  essence 
of  lyricism  is  contained  at  the  close  of  the  preceding 
stanza  : 

But  what  am  I  ? 
An  infant  crying  in  the  night : 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light : 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry. 

It  is  the  language  of  feeling  which  is  invoked,  and 
through  which  the  poet  sought  to  transcend  the  revela- 
tion of  knowledge : 


TENNYSON  235 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answer'd  '  I  have  felt '. 

No,  Uke  a  child  in  doubt  and  fear : 

And  that  blind  clamour  made  me  wise ; 
Then  was  I  as  a  child  that  cries, 
But,  crying,  knows  his  father  near. 

Ih.,  cxxiv. 

A  new  language  should  deliver  a  new  message.  How 
far  did  this  child  of  feeling — ^the  critic  of  In  Memoriam 
must  ask — succeed  in  delivering  such  a  message  ?  How 
far  do  these  associative  phrases,  softening  the  harshness 
of  the  intellect,  truly  and  finally  correspond  to  the 
questions  raised  in  the  poem  ?  Do  the  pacified  feelings 
extend  the  canopy  of  their  peace  to  reason  ?  Does 
the  tranquillized  '  I '  speak  finally  for  '  the  human 
race '  ?  For  the  questions  raised  by  Tennyson  are 
serious  to  thought.  '  Are  God  and  Nature  then  at 
strife  ? '  was  one.  '  What  fame  is  left  for  human 
deeds  in  endless  age  ? '  was  another.  To  '  contemplate 
all  this  work  of  Time '  was  his  attitude  towards  geo- 
logical speculation.  '  I  think  we  are  not  wholly  brain, 
.  .  .  Let  science  prove  we  are,  and  then  What  matters 
science  unto  men  ? '  was  the  gage  which  he  threw  down 
in  the  morphological  arena.  It  is  not  unreasonable 
to  expect  a  reply  as  bold  as  the  challenge.  But  Tenny- 
son shrank  from  this  issue,  both  here  and  in  his  later 
poems.  He  calls  man  '  the  herald  of  a  higher  race  ',  but 
the  heraldic  emblem  which  he  worships  is  the  '  grand 
old  name  of  gentleman '.    He  bids  man  '  move  up- 


236     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ward,  working  out  the  beast ',  and  '  let  tlie  ape  and 
tiger  die '.  He  repudiates  the  scientific  monster  who 
would  '  shape  his  action  like  the  greater  ape '.  He 
declares  that  he  is  '  born  to  better  things '.  He 
guesses  at  a  '  power  in  darkness '  transcending  the  god 
of  evolution,  and  he  trusts,  or  believes,  that '  all  is  well ' . 
But,  withal,  men's  efforts  towards  good  are  '  red 
fool-fury '  thrice  repeated.  Do  nothing,  dare  nothing, 
assert  nothing — tradition,  custom,  doubt — are  at  the 
root  of  his  practical  counsel,  and  '  the  larger  hope  '  and 
the  '  divine  event '  are  subordinated  to  these  negations. 
The  '  higher  man  '  and  the  '  better  things '  are  post- 
poned by  Tennyson  to  a  dateless  consummation  : 

Where  is  one  that,  bom  of  woman,  altogether  can  escape 
Prom  the  lower  world  within  him,  moods  of  tiger  or  of  ape  ? 
Man  as  yet  is  being  made,  and  ere  the  crowning  age  of  ages 
Shall  not  aeon  after  aeon  pass,  and  touch  him  into  shape  ? 

This  was  his  commentary  in  later  life  upon  his  creed 
in  1850.  The  killing  of  the  tiger  and  the  ape  was  ad- 
journed sine  die,  and,  meanwhile,  the  progress  of 
freedom,  moral  and  political  alike,  was  to  observe  the 
conventions  of  decorum. 
Tenny-       We    return     from     Tennyson,    the    interpreter,    to 

son's 

style.  Tennyson,  the  craftsman,  with  his  unfailing  sources 
of  delight.  One  or  two  elements  in  this  delight  have 
already  been  analysed,  and  it  may,  summarily,  be 
said  that  a  mastery  of  words  and  sounds  almost  in- 
finitely subtle  is  the  secret  of  the  whole.  Even  when 
this  is  said,  however,  the  wonder  of  the  secret  remains. 
The   utmost  that   criticism   can   do    is   to   indicate — 


TENNYSON  237 

somewhat  conjecturally  —  some  keys  to  the  poetic 
method :  the  genius  manipulating  the  keys  lies  beyond 
the  crucible  of  the  critic. 

In  the  bazaars  of  the  East  there  may  be  seen,  sitting 
cross-legged  on  his  bench,  the  goldsmith  with  his 
trays  of  precious  stones.  Darting  a  tiny  pair  of  pincers 
here  and  there  among  the  jewels,  he  picks  out  now  one 
and  now  another,  and  examines  it  in  the  sun  and  the 
shade.  If  the  shghtest  flaw  be  detected,  the  stone  is 
put  back  into  the  tray  :  the  chosen  gems  are  laid 
aside,  and  are  disposed  in  artistic  patterns,  according 
to  colour  and  size.  Tennyson's  method  with  words 
and  sounds  was  not  unlike  the  goldsmith's,  and  tiaras 
and  rivieres  of  design  rewarded  his  patient  craftsman- 
ship. The  total  gain  to  the  technique  of  literature  is 
far  more  than  a  matter  of  vowel-sounds,  but  a  single 
instance  makes  it  clear  how  important  is  this  factor  of 
word-music.  Nothing  else  would  have  made  the  poet 
alter  the  opening  line  of  Tithonus  from  '  Ay  me,  ay  me  ! 
the  woods  decay  and  fall '  to  '  The  woods  decay,  the 
woods  decay  and  fall'. 

From  this  elementary  example  it  is  mainly  a  task  of 
observation  to  track  the  art  of  the  poet  through  its 
more  remote  and  complicated  windings.  Take  the 
following  stanza  from  one  of  the  songs  in  Maud  : 

Queen  rose  of  the  rosebud  garden  of  girls, 

Come  hither,  the  dances  are  done, 
In  gloss  of  satin  and  glimmer  of  pearls, 

Queen  lily  and  rose  in  one  ; 
Shine  out,  little  head,  sunning  over  with  curls. 

To  the  flowers,  and  be  their  sun. 


238     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  mere  rhymes,  though  in  triplicate,  are  the  least 
part  of  the  charm  of  these  verses.  '  Queen  rose  .  .  . 
rosebud  .  .  .  Queen  lily  and  rose '  ;  '  g&rden  .  .  . 
girh ',  '  d&nces  .  .  .  done ',  '  gloaa  .  .  .  g^Zimmer ', 
'  lily  .  .  .  little  ',  '  sunmng  .  .  .  sun  \  are  a  few  of  the 
aUiterative  and  repetitive  effects.  The  vowel-efEects 
are  similarly  skilful.  '  Hither  ',  '  satin  ',  '  glimmer  ', 
'  lily  ',  '  Httle  ',  '  sunning  ',  all  contain  the  short  '  i ' 
sound  which  adds  to  the  tripping  measure  of  the  dance, 
and  the  sound  of  '  out '  is  caught  up  in  '  over ',  as 
the  '  8  ,  .  n  '  of  '  shine  '  in  the  '  s  .  .  n  '  of  '  sun '. 

All  this,  in  analysis,  is  meticulous,  and  seems  very 
distant  from  the  impression  actually  produced  by  the 
poem.  But  turn  from  it  to  the  song  in  The  Princess, 
already  mentioned  above,  and  note  how  completely 
this  depends  on  similar  triumphs  of  skill.  The  whole 
song  must  be  quoted  ;  there  are  only  twenty  lines  : 

Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean, 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair 
Rise  in  the  heart,  and  gather  to  the  eyes. 
In  looking  on  the  happy  Autumn-fields, 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

Fresh  as  the  first  beam  gUttering  on  a  sail, 
That  brings  our  friends  up  from  the  underworld. 
Sad  as  the  last  which  reddens  over  one 
That  sinks  with  all  we  love  below  the  verge ; 
So  sad,  80  fresh,  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

Ah,  sad  and  strange  as  in  dark  summer  dawns 
The  earliest  pipe  of  half-awaken'd  birds 
To  dying  ears,  when  unto  dying  eyes 
The  casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering  square; 
So  sad,  so  strange,  the  days  that  are  no  more. 


TENNYSON  239 

Dear  as  remember' d  kisses  after  death. 
And  sweet  as  those  by  hopeless  fancy  feign'd 
On  lips  that  are  for  others  ;    deep  as  love, 
Deep  as  first  love,  and  wild  with  all  regret ; 
O  Death  in  Life,  the  days  that  are  no  more. 


Here  we  notice,  or,  rather,  we  hardly  notice,  that 
there  are  actually  no  rhymes.  Tennyson  straightly 
renounces  this  first  aid  to  poetry,  and  relies  solely  upon 
the  resources  of  interior  decoration.  The  close  of  each 
stanza  with  the  words  '  the  days  that  are  no  more '  is 
the  first  and  most  obvious  pro-rhyme.  '  Tears  ,  .  . 
tears  .  .  .  tears ',  in  lines  1  and  2,  is  likewise  fairly 
obvious,  as  are  '  fresh '  (6  and  10),  '  sad  '  (8,  10,  11  and 
15),  '  strange  ',  '  deep '  and  '  love  '.  Another  sig- 
nificant point  is  the  predominance  of  monosyllables. 
Thirty-four  words  out  of  forty-two  in  the  first  stanza 
are  one-syllabled,  thirty-five  out  of  forty-two  in  the 
last,  and  thirty-nine  out  of  forty-four  in  the  second. 
The  value  of  this  feature  is  twofold,  or,  rather,  it  pre- 
sents two  aspects  of  simplicity.  The  meaning  is  pellu- 
cidly  clear  ;  the  notes  strike  directly  on  the  emotions, 
like  pure  music  imtranslated  through  language  ;  and, 
secondly,  the  mind  is  soothed  by  famihar  and  homely 
words.  Next,  there  are  the  subtler  assonances 
running  through  the  whole  poem.  Take  the  '  d '  and 
't'  sounds,  for  example,  in  'tears',  'idle',  'depth', 
'  divine ',  '  despair '  (two  of  these  repeat  '  p  '  as  well) ; 
take  the  short  vowel  sound  in  '  fresh  ',  '  first ',  '  glitter- 
ing ',  '  brings ',  '  friends ',  '  and ',  '  sad  ',  '  red '  (noting 
the  quadrupled  '  d  '  ending),  '  sinks ',  '  love ',  and  so 


240     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

back,  through  '  sad ',  to  '  fresh '.  Take  the  long 
vowel  sound  in  the  third  stanza  :  '  strange  ',  '  dark  ', 
'  dawn  ',  '  earl ',  '  pipe  ',  '  wake  ',  '  dy  ',  '  ears ',  '  eyes  ', 
'  case  ',  '  slow  ',  '  grow  ',  '  square  ' ;  and,  again  and  less 
variously  in  the  fourth  :  '  dear  ',  '  death  ',  '  sweet ', 
'  hope  ',  '  feign  ',  '  deep  ',  '  wild  ',  '  Life  ',  chiefly  long 
'  e  '  and  long  '  i '.  Take  '  rise  .  .  .  eyes  ',  '  love  below 
the  verge  '  ('  1 '  and  '  v  ') ;  take  '  casement  .  .  . 
square '  (the  '  ka '  and  '  s '  sounds  in  both),  and  the 
repeated  '  o  '  and  '  g  '  in  the  same  line  ;  take  '  lips  .  .  . 
love ',  and  many  others,  and  even  a  first  reading  of  this 
poem  will  reveal  its  marvellous  sound-magic.  Break, 
break,  break,  Crossing  the  Bar,  and  other  poems  will 
repay  a  similar  scrutiny,  and  thereafter  we  shall  wonder 
less  at  the  feats  of  mere  onomatopoeia,  such  as  the 
famous  passage  in  the  Morte  d" Arthur  commencing 
'  Dry  clash'd  his  harness  in  the  icy  caves  '. 
Conclu-  It  would  be  too  sweeping  to  say  that  these  few  songs 
are  the  only  poems  on  which  Tennyson's  renown  will 
stand.  In  the  course  of  his  long  life  he  wrote 
a  large  volume  of  poetry,  and  it  is  not  possible 
to  point  to  any  definite  falling-of?  from  the  first  to  the 
last.  Recollections  of  the  Arabian  NigMs,  for  example, 
which  appeared  in  the  first  volume  of  his  poems,  is  not 
more  exquisite  in  its  kind  than  Crossing/  the  Bar,  which, 
like  death,  '  closes  all ',  To  these,  then,  and  to  Mariana 
in  the  South,  to  Break,  break,  break,  to  a  few  of  the 
Greek  and  English  idylls,  to  Virgil,  to  Frater  Ave  atque 
Vale,  and  to  Merlin  and  the  Gleam,  the  reader,  like  the 
traveller  to  the  south,  returns  with  renewed  admiration. 


sion. 


TENNYSON  241 

There  is  a  certain  invariability  in  Tennyson,  which  may, 
perhaps,  be  compared,  in  respect  to  his  readers'  de- 
pendence upon  it,  to  the  consciousness  of  Riviera  sun- 
shine prevailing  through  the  fogs  of  a  London  winter. 
We  know  that  we  can  transplant  ourselves,  by  no 
difficult  incantations,  and  with  no  transcendental 
effort,  to  the  pure  cleanness  of  his  diction  and  the  lucid 
beauty  of  his  style.  Nothing  wild,  nothing  strange, 
will  accost  us  ;  we  shall  change  our  sky,  not  our  mind  ; 
such  mental  refreshment  as  we  receive  will  be  due  to 
external  influences. 

And  Tennyson,  as  he  never  fell  below,  so  he  never 
rose  above  himself.  It  was  owing  to  his  serene  self- 
measurement  that  he  used  his  material  so  correctly, 
breaking  it  up  to  the  scale  of  the  talent  to  be  employed 
upon  it.  Herein  may  lie  the  non-contagion,  the  less 
than  fully  possessive  power,  of  the  dramas,  the  Idtjlls 
of  the  King,  and  even  of  In  Memoriam.  His  inspiration 
was  hardly  strong  enough  for  these  efforts.  He  be- 
longed so  completely  to  his  own  times,  or,  rather,  he 
was  so  obsequious,  in  the  best  sense,  to  the  shifting 
opinions  of  his  age,  that  he  missed  the  permanent 
aspect  and  the  reconciling  power  of  vision.  It  would 
seem,  too,  that  the  very  perfection  which  he  aimed  at — 
and  reached — in  expression  was  only  to  be  acquired  on 
the  lower  levels  of  thought.  He  was  so  properly 
jealous  of  the  exact  word  and  the  exact  sound  that, 
as  he  said  himself,  many  fine  verses  escaped  up  the 
chimney.  He  was  never  content  to  be  only  imper- 
fectly understood,  as  was  the  fate,  occasionally,  of 
16 


242     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

other  poets  in  his  generation  ;  and  it  may  be  that  some 
of  those  escaped  verses  bore  the  impress  of  more 
difficult  arguments  than  Tennyson  succeeded  in  sustain- 
ing. Moreover,  his  eyes  were  closed  to  much  that  was 
urgent  in  life.  The  shows  of  things  appealed  to  him 
more  strongly  than  the  rude  and  the  nude  beneath. 
He  did  not  subscribe  to  the  philosophy  of  Carlyle's 
Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh.  The  '  crowning  common- 
sense  '  of  his  own  ideal  was,  perhaps,  his  mark  as  a 
thinker,  recommended  always  by  the  charm  of  his 
perfect  craftsmanship  in  execution. 


3.  THE  NOVEL. 


LYTTON'S  prefaces  and  example  have  prepared  us  for 
the  discovery,  that  what  the  drama  was  to  the  age 
of  Elizabeth,  the  poem  in  heroic  couplets  to  the  age  of 
Anne,  and  lyric  verse  to  the  age  of  Revolution,  such 
was  the  novel  to  prove  itself  in  the  age  of  Queen 
Victoria. 

It  was  adapted  from  the  older  models  of  Richardson,  Domin- 
SmoUett  and  Fielding  to  almost  every  kind  of  use.  fiction. 
From  the  beginning  of  the  era  to  this  day  there  is 
hardly  a  tendency  of  thought  or  an  aspect  of  action 
which  has  not  been  reflected  in  its  mirror.  There  are 
novels  of  art,  science,  labour  and  religion.  Probably, 
if  search  be  made,  there  will  be  discovered  anti-vivi- 
section novels,  as  there  are  certainly  novels  advocating 
the  extension  of  the  sufirage  to  women.  The  com- 
parative history  of  certain  social  developments  can  be 
traced  by  a  careful  student  in  selected  works  of  fiction. 
Thus,  Thomas  Hughes's  Tom  Brown  and  Archdeacon 
Farrar's  Eric  must  be  supplemented  by  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling's  Stalky  and  Co.,  in  order  to  obtain  a  full  view 
of  boys'  school-life  in  the  nineteenth  century.     The 


244  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

rise  of  the  modern  millionaire  and  the  increased  cost  of 
living  might  be  illustrated  from  a  hundred  novels,  from 
Becky  Sharp's  modest  ambition  to  be  virtuous  on 
£5000  a  year  to  the  plutocrats  of  Mr.  Percy  White  and 
other  writers.  And,  apart  altogether  from  definite 
types  of  fiction — the  historical  novel,  such  as  Thackeray's 
Esmond ;  the  novel  of  adventure,  such  as  Stevenson's 
Treasure  Island  ;  the  character-study,  such  as  Mere- 
dith's Egoist — there  are  various  novels  associated  with 
fixed  periods  and  ideas.  Dickens's  Oliver  Twist  gave 
the  name  of  Bumbledom  to  the  tyrannous  epoch  of  the 
parish  beadle.  Sir  Walter  Besant's  All  Sorts  and 
Conditions  of  Men  was  the  origin  of  the  People's  Palace 
in  Mile  End.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  Robert  Elsmere 
expressed  a  phase  of  the  conflict  between  tradition 
and  modernity.  Further,  the  form  of  fiction  has 
been  used  to  cover  tractates  and  treatises  which  are 
hardly  novels  at  all,  such  as  Cardinal  Newman's  Loss 
and  Gain,  and  Walter  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean 
and  Gaston  de  Latour,  ranking  as'  romances  somewhat 
in  the  same  sense  as  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia.  Con- 
versely, the  spirit  of  fiction  has  invaded  other  than 
novel-forms :  Tennyson's  English  idyls  were  love- 
stories  versified ;  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning's 
Aurora  Leigh  was  a  novel  in  verse.  Again,  there  is 
a  type  of  fiction  which  transcends  the  common  limits 
of  humanity.  Stevenson's  Dr.  Jehjll  and  Mr.  Hyde, 
The  Jungle-hooks  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling,  and 
F.  Anstey's  Vice-Versa  teach  truths  of  conduct  by 
means  of  fables. 


THE  NOVEL  245 

The  normal  development  has  been  most  rapid  in  recent 
years.  Writers  like  Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  and 
Mr.  Galsworthy,  though  they  do  not  fall  within  the  period 
we  are  considering,  ^vill  afford  evidence  to  future  genera- 
tions as  to  the  social  conditions  of  to-day  far  more 
direct  and  apodeictic,  if  a  logical  term  may  be  employed, 
than  that  which  is  to  be  gathered  from  the  writings  of 
earlier  novelists.  The  whole  class  of  '  slum  '-novels, 
for  example,  which  flourished  a  year  or  two  ago,  as  a 
kind  of  offshoot  of  Besant,  was  little  more  than  Blue- 
books  made  sensational ;  and,  more  recently,  it  is 
middle-class  society  on  which  the  limelight  has  been 
turned. 

Plainly,  no  attempt  can  be  made  to  examine  in 
detail  the  writings  of  all  the  novelists  who  adorn 
the  Victorian  age.  The  utmost  that  can  be  done 
is  to  enumerate  the  chief  writers,  and  to  discuss, 
by  groups  rather  than  by  individuals,  the  main 
tendencies  which  affected  them.  The  prevailing 
motive  of  thought  was  set  towards  the  positive, 
towards  an  acceptance  and  perusal  of  the  resources 
of  science  on  the  one  part,  and,  on  the  other,  to- 
wards a  furtherance  of  the  ends  of  social  reform. 
The  audience  itself  was  changing.  It  could  not 
be  reached  by  the  theatre,  and  it  was  for  the 
moment  less  sensitive  to  the  emotions  through  which 
poetry  appeals.  As  the  shepherd  cried  to  his  maid, 
in  the  idyl  introduced  by  Tennyson  into  The 
Princess,  so  the  novehsts  implored  their  muse  to 
come    down    from   the    mountain   height,  where   the 


246     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

broken   purposes  waste  in  air,   and  to  find  love   in 
the  valley — 

So  waste  not  thou ;  but  come ;  for  all  the  vales 
Await  thee ;  azure  piUars  of  the  hearth 
Arise  to  thee ;  thy  children  call,  and  I 
Thy  shepherd  pipe. 


The  azure  pillars  were  multiplied.  It  was  precisely 
this  domestic  cry  which  Charles  Dickens  (1812-70), 
the  first  Victorian  novelist  and  in  some  respects  the 
greatest,  dehberately  set  himself  to  make  heard. 
Charles  As  the  son  of  a  Government  clerk,  he  belonged 
^  ^"  ■  to  that  grade  of  society  which  he  most  skilfully 
pourtrayed  ;  the  grade  which  struggles  to  make  ends 
meet,  which  is  always  trying  to  make  little  seem  much, 
which  is  genteel  abroad  and  dishevelled — or  even 
brutal — at  home.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  picture  which 
he  drew.  Education,  open  air  and  self-respect  have 
since  altered  many  of  its  features.  But  at  the  time 
when  Dickens  wrote  the  picture  was  true  enough. 
This  class  had  not  been  exploited.  They  had  stood 
outside  literature  till  then ;  practically,  they  had 
stood  outside  life.  They  were  discovered  by  re- 
formers and  legislators,  who  sought  to  improve  their 
condition  and  to  secure  their  vote.  So  they  became 
important  at  this  date,  and  Dickens  displayed  them 
as  they  were.  Secondly,  Dickens  continued  Lytton's 
'  novels  with  a  purpose  ',  directing  the  chief  force  of  his 


THE  NOVEL  247 

crusade  against  the  oppression  of  children,  against  the 
workhouse  system  in  Oliver  Ttvist  (the  first  of  his 
Sketches  by  Boz — 1834 — had  been  a  sketch  of  the 
parish  beadle)  and  against  the  notorious  Yorkshire 
schools  in  Nicholas  Nickleby.  Thirdly,  Dickens  was 
moved  by  a  genuine  love  of  London.  London,  un- 
seizable  as  a  whole,  has  been  interpreted  in  some  of 
her  aspects  by  certain  writers  and  painters.  Whistler 
rendered  her  strangeness — the  romance  of  street-lamps 
in  the  twilight  of  evening — ;  Dickens  rendered  her 
familiarity.  There  is  no  other  word  so  appropriate 
to  his  studies  of  her  folk  and  folk-lore  :  her  grime 
and  shabbiness,  her  horse-play  and  pastimes,  her 
homeliness  and  ugliness  were  made  familiar  by  him. 
They  led  him  to  the  wharves  of  the  Thames,  and  to 
thieves'  kitchens  in  Seven  Dials.  Much  of  his  London 
has  disappeared,  but  certain  districts  about  Snow  Hill, 
and  further  eastward  through  the  City,  are  still  ahve 
with  the  people  of  his  fancy. 

These,  then,  first,  in  an  appreciation  of  the  writer, 
who,  from  1840  to  1870,  and  especially  in  the  first 
twenty  years,  took  the  hearts  of  his  readers  by  storm  ^ : 

^  The  old  stories  are  well  known  of  the  publication  by  monthly 
parts,  of  the  eager  waiting  for  the  numbers,  and  of  the  compart- 
mental  style  of  composition  to  which  this  practice  seemed  to  lead, 
accounting  to  some  extent  for  the  frequent  incoherency  of  Dickens's 
plots.  But  it  is  not  generally  remembered  at  how  early  a  date 
— nearly  twenty  years  before  his  death — Dickens  ranked  as  an 
English  classic.  Mrs.  Gaskell,  in  Cranford  (1853),  makes  the  death 
of  one  of  her  characters  turn  on  his  absorption  in  the  new  number 
of  Pickwick.  It  is  seldom  that  a  contemporary  writer  is  thus 
treated  as  a  classic. 


248     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

his  criticism  of  life  in  the  grade  in  which  he  was  born  ; 
his  zeal  for  social  welfare,  and  his  familiar  London. 
An  unflinching  realism  of  temperament  and  an  ideal 
method  of  treatment  combined  to  produce  the  effects 
of  which  Dickens  is  a  master.  His  character-studies 
stand  out,  ideally  typifying  real  action,  and  hence 
the  extraordinary  prominence  of  his  people  above 
their  surroundings.  His  was  a  purely  formal  idealism, 
not  the  moral  idealism  of  temperament.  He  turned 
his  realities  to  caricatures  by  exhibiting  them  with- 
out their  setting.  The  realistic  observer  lifted  the 
spectacle  out  of  its  natural  scene  and  circumstances, 
and  displayed  it,  as  it  were,  on  a  screen.  A  bad  man 
became  a  monster  of  iniquity.  A  good  man  became 
impossibly  beneficent,  a  funny  man  incessantly 
ridiculous.  George  Crabbe  in  the  previous  generation 
and  Thomas  Hardy  in  the  next  would  have  brought 
the  facts  visibly  before  us.  Dickens  pruned  them, 
and  pared  them,  leaving  for  representation  a  bare 
hulk  of  what  he  saw,  correct  and  true  in  each  detail, 
but  stripped  by  the  writer's  idealism  of  its  likeness  to 
the  whole  truth. 

Another  point,  less  personal  to  Dickens,  belonged  to 
the  age  in  which  he  wrote.  Reason  was  perverted  by 
sentiment.  It  pursued  the  positive  point  of  view  till 
just  within  sight  of  the  goal,  and  then  suddenly  clutched 
at  the  vanishing  symbols  of  feeling.  The  logic  of  facts 
was  grasped  in  those  days  of  scientific  method,  but  its 
remorseless  conclusions  were  evaded,  as  Mr.  Joseph 
Conrad,  for  example,  and  other  writers  do  not  evade 


THE  NOVEL  249 

them  to-day.  A  dying  May-Queen,  bereft  of  her 
triumph,  torn  away  from  her  family  and  friends,  and 
cut  off  in  the  prime  of  youth,  repaired  that  sequel  of 
disaster  by  a  solace  obviously  conventional,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  poet  of  evolution,  and  false  to  the  principles 
of  his  art.  An  Enoch  Arden,  restored  from  exile, 
and  from  a  loneliness  magnificently  painted,  to  find 
his  wife  and  his  friend  living  as  husband  and  wife,  and 
his  children  calling  the  other  father,  crept  away  to  die 
unrevealed,  and  closed  this  series  of  misfortune  by  a 
transposition  of  the  key.  Faith  and  its  symbols  were 
invoked  to  staunch  the  bleeding  wounds  of  reason. 
Art  was  true  to  its  canons  till  the  breaking-point,  or 
till  the  point  at  which  consistency  broke  down.  Then 
it  sought  to  reconcile  the  reader  by  employing  a 
different  set  of  terms.  In  effect,  the  reader  rebels 
according  to  the  degree  of  his  reasonableness.  The 
introduction  of  a  sentimental  sanction  to  justify 
a  rational  argument  is,  artistically,  false,  and,  morally, 
unsound.  But  the  convenient  delusion  was  fostered 
by  the  intellectual  temper  of  the  times,  arming  for  the 
long  fight  between  knowledge  and  belief.  It  was  the 
sophism  of  the  spirit,  compromising  truth,  and  putting 
shackles  on  freedom.  Certain  scenes  in  Domhey  and 
Son,  in  David  Copperfield,  and  other  novels,  are  resented 
at  once  as  inconsequent  in  inspiration.  The  true  and 
the  false  notes  are  struck  with  an  irritating  indifference 
to  the  universal  element  in  art.  Dora  is  sometimes  true 
and  pure  woman,  the  eternal  feminine  of  a  craftsman's 
genius ;     sometimes   she   is   the   idiotic   doll — strictly, 


250     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

idiosyncratic — of  a  peculiar  temperament  fashioned  by 
a  particular  combination  in  circumstance  and  time.  The 
elemental  virtue  departs  from  her,  and  she  is  adapted  in 
her  own  despite  to  the  cringing  half-truths  of  her  age. 

It  is  easier  to  enjoy  Dickens  than  to  criticize  him,  yet 
he  challenges  criticism  in  the  sense  that  he  appealed 
consciously  to  posterity  : 

As  the  stern  and  plain  truth  was  a  part  of  the  purpose 
of  this  book,  I  will  not,  for  these  readers,  abate  one  hole 
in  the  Dodger's  coat,  or  one  scrap  of  curl-paper  in  the 
girl's  dishevelled  hair.  I  have  no  faith  in  the  delicacy 
which  cannot  bear  to  look  upon  them.  ...  It  is  useless 
to  discuss  whether  the  conduct  and  character  of  the  girl 
seems  natural  or  unnatural,  probable  or  improbable, 
right  or  wrong.  IT  IS  TRUE.  .  .  .  From  the  first 
introduction  of  that  poor  wretch  to  her  lajdng  her  bloody 
head  upon  the  robber's  breast,  ...  it  is  emphatically 
God's  truth. 

So  far  from  the  preface  to  Oliver  Twist.  In  his 
preface  to  Martin  Chuzzlemt  Dickens  wrote  : 

Nothing  is  more  common  in  real  life  than  a  want  of 
profitable  reflection  on  the  causes  of  many  vices  and  crimes 
that  awaken  the  general  horror.  What  is  substantially 
true  of  families  in  this  respect,  is  true  of  a  whole  common- 
wealth. ...  In  all  my  writings,  I  hope  I  have  taken 
every  possible  opportunity  of  showing  the  want  of 
sanitary  improvements  in  the  neglected  dwellings  of  the 
poor.  Mrs.  Sarah  Gamp  is  a  representation  of  the  hired 
attendant  on  the  poor  in  sickness,  .  .  .  Mrs.  Betsy 
Prig  is  a  fair  specimen  of  a  Hospital  Nurse. 


THE  NOVEL  251 

And  in  his  preface  to  Bleak  House  he  declared  : 

I  have  purposely  dwelt  upon  the  romantic  side  of 
familiar  things. 

A  writer's  purpose  is  not  always  his  readers'  law.  The 
emphatic  and  substantial  truths  which  Dickens  laboured 
to  expound  escape  the  sense  of  an  audience  which 
delights  in  the  humour  of  Jack  Dawkins  and  Mr.  Bumble, 
Sairey  Gamp  and  Mrs.  Podgers.  The  ingenious  humbug, 
Mr.  Pecksniff,  is  more  diverting  than  the  Chuzzlewit 
tragedy  is  impressive.  '  The  romantic  side  of  familiar 
things '  in  Bleak  House  is  a  less  abiding  memory  than 
Mrs.  Jellyby.  Partly,  this  difference  is  explained  by 
what  was  said  above  as  to  the  idealism  of  treatment 
correcting  the  realism  of  temperament.  What '  is  true  ' 
may  still  '  seem  improbable ',  for  between  the  observa- 
tion and  its  presentment  the  mind  of  the  writer  is 
interposed.  The  '  fair  specimen  of  a  hospital  nurse  ' 
may  have  been  the  Betsy  Prig  whom  Dickens  saw ;  it 
is  not  the  Betsy  whom  he  shows  us.  He  selects  her 
qualities  so  rigorously  and  guards  them  so  jealously  that 
they  become  grotesque  under  his  manipulation.  So  far, 
the  work  of  Dickens  is  a  failure.  His  skill  fell  short 
of  his  design. 

All  this  matters  very  little,  in  the  face  of  what  he 
actually  achieved.  Dickens  falls  an  easy  prey  to 
paradox  in  judgment.  He  was  a  humourist  working 
in  tragedy,  a  caricaturist  attacking  social  wrongs. 
He  is  remembered  best  for  what  he  valued  least.  His 
intentions  were  belied   by  his   practice.     But  a  man 


252     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

may  plead  guilty  to  these  counts,  and  yet  smile  at 
his  critics  from  Elysium.  There  are  certain  invaluable 
assets  by  which  English  literature  would  be  poorer 
save  for  the  genius  of  Charles  Dickens.  There  were 
certain  great  things  he  did  well,  which  no  one  since  has 
done  better.  There  is,  above  all  things,  his  exuber. 
ance,  recalling  the  manner  of  the  Elizabethans,  and 
abundantly  refreshing  to  an  exhausted  age.  He  was 
thorough  in  all  that  he  wrote,  whether  his  mood  was 
grave  or  gay.  Heartiness  has  fallen  out  of  fashion  in 
these  days,  when  good  form  is  identified  with  a  culti- 
vated uniformity  of  inarticulateness.  A  robuster 
courage  may  be  restored,  and  the  thin,  tepid,  vacuous, 
nexpressive,  undemonstrative  demeanour  which  is 
now  considered  correct  may  disappear  with  the  irre- 
solute canons  of  taste  and  breeding  whence  it  sprang. 
Then  Shakespeare,  Fielding,  Dickens,  and  other  great 
realists  in  letters  will  again  inherit  the  earth.  We 
shall  not  be  too  lily-fingered  to  handle  '  the  Dodger's 
coat ',  nor  too  careful  of  our  knees  to  '  thank  heaven, 
fasting,  for  a  good  man's  love '  {As  You  Like  It,  iv.  v.). 
Read  the  description  of  Marseilles  at  the  opening  of 
Little  Dorrit,  or  read  the  account  of  Carker's  journey 
in  chapter  xxv  of  Dombey  and  Son,  vol.  ii.,  or  read 
chapter  xlv  of  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  or  read  a  score  of 
other  passages  in  the  novels  of  Charles  Dickens,  or 
his  Tale  of  Two  Cities  right  through,  and  a  sense  of  his 
strength,  and  power,  and  of  his  deeply  human  sym- 
pathy, cannot  fail  to  impress  itself.  Mawkish  in 
places  he  was,  and  in  places  melodramatic,  and  often 


THE  NOVEL  253 

he  blundered  helplessly  among  wooden  figures  of  his 
own  manufacture,  as  when  he  tried  to  satirize  '  high 
life  '  ;  but  he  has  left  us  a  gallery  of  portraits — Mr. 
Micawber,  the  Cheeryble  Brothers,  Wackford  Squeers, 
Pickwick,  Pecksnii?,  Sam  Weller,  Silas  Wegg,  Rogue 
Riderhood,  Jingle,  Uriah  Heep,  Mrs.  Gamp,  Peggotty, 
Sally  Brass,  Mrs.  Wilfer,  Betsy  Trotwood,  and  others 
too  many  to  enumerate — whom  no  one  knowing  them 
can  forget.  These  are  his  title  to  immortality,  the 
splendid  bead-roll  of  his  praise.  To  them  the  sore 
or  jaded  spirit,  smitten  with  the  disease  of  world- 
weariness,  repairs  without  fear  of  disappointment. 
They  set  free  the  springs  of  tonic  laughter.  Their 
creator  is  the  physician  of  the  mind. 

Though  Dickens  founded  no  school,  and  on  his  Novels  of 
humorous  side  is  inimitable  ^,  yet  the  homes  of  the 
poor  were  invaded  in  these  and  later  years  by  novelists 
moved  by  like  sympathy.  Thus,  Elizabeth  Gaskell 
(1810-65)  issued  her  Mary  Barton  in  1848.  As  a 
pathetic  picture  of  working-class  life  in  Manchester, 
this  novel  takes  high  rank,  and  won  praise  from  Carlyle 
and  others.  Later,  in  Sylvia's  Lovers  (1863),  she  returned 
to  the  same  social  grade,  and  provided  a  moving  tale 
of  urban  and  rural  characters.  These  novels,  signifi- 
cant at  their  time,  are  held  in  less  account  to-day, 

•  Perhaps  the  stories  of  Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs  are  most  akin  to  Dickens 
from  the  point  of  view  of  humour.  Two  main  differences  are, 
first,  the  limited  range  of  Mr.  Jacobs's  observation,  and,  secondly, 
that  the  farce  resides  in  the  situations  as  much  as  in  the  characters. 
There  is  more  farce  than  human  comedy.  But  our  laughter  at 
any  ra*e  is  involuntary. 


254     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

when  Mrs.  Gaskell  is  chiefly  remembered  as  the  author 
of  Cranford,  a  simple,  humorous  study  of  feminine 
gentility,  drawn  from  observation  at  Knutsford,  and 
of  perennial  charm,  and,  further,  as  the  author  of  a 
Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  to  whose  works  we  shall  come. 
Again,  in  1849,  Charles  Kingsley  published  Alton 
Locke,  a  kind  of  Chartist  novel,  eloquent  of  the  people's 
wrongs.  George  EHot's  Felix  Holt,  the  Radical,  did 
not  appear  till  1866,  though  its  scene  opens  in  1832  ; 
and  this  brings  us  to  the  more  recent  work  of  Sir  Walter 
Besant  (1836-1901),  whose  best  books  were  written 
with  James  Rice,  but  whose  All  Sorts  and  Conditions 
of  Men  appeared  in  1882,  at  about  the  same  time  when 
George  Gissing  (1857-1903)  was  beginning  his  some- 
what gloomy  series  of  novels — The  Unclassed,  Demos, 
New  Grub  Street,  The  Town  Traveller,  etc.  A  descend- 
ant in  this  line  is  Mr.  Pett  Ridge. 


m. 

Charlotte  Another  group  in  fiction  is  suggested  by  the  mention 
Bronte,  ^f  Charlotte  Brontii  (1816-55).  Jane  Eyre  (1847),  her 
best  known  and  most  memorable  novel,  is  the  story  of  a 
woman's  man  and  of  a  woman's  wants.  The  slightly 
caustic  note  and  the  obvious  chafing  at  restrictions 
reflected  from  the  writer's  own  experience  are  personal 
to  Charlotte  Bronte,  whose  biography  has  been  so  much 
expanded  since  Mrs.  Gaskell's  wholly  admirable  Life 
that  it  need  not  detain  us  here.     We  shall  but  refer 


THE  NOVEL  255 

very  briefly  to  the  pathetic  and  quite  unique  picture 
of  starved  and   eloquent  genius  which   the  household 
at   Haworth   provides.     The   three   sisters,    Charlotte, 
Emily  and  Anne — '  Currer,  Ellis  and  Acton  Bell ',  as 
they  disguised  their  sex  and  their  identity — ,with  the 
silent,  difficult,  old  father,  and  the  dreary  tragedy  of 
the   brother's    life,   are   types    of    passionate  woman- 
hood,   deprived    by   inscrutable   fate    of    appropriate 
channels  of  expression.     So  much  that  they  wanted  was 
denied  them :    love,   company,   fame,   and  the   more 
material   luxuries   of   books,   travel   and   dress   which 
mo^ey   would   have    bought.     Yet   through    all,    and 
despite    all,    something    noble    each    achieved    before 
death     overtook    them.      It     is     doubtful    which     is 
more   pathetic — the   shy  visits  to  London,  with   their 
shadowy  instalments   of  due  fame,   which  Charlotte, 
the  eldest  sister,  lived  long  enough  to  enjoy,  though 
the  enjoyment  was  always  half  anguish,   or  Emily's 
terrible  silence,  unbroken  by  the  incident  of  death,  or 
the  slower  decline  of  Anne.     Charlotte  Bronte  survived 
both   her   sisters,    and   there   remain   Emily   Bronte's 
few  poems  and  her  forceful  romance  Wuthering  Heights, 
and  Anne  Bronte's  two  novels,  Agnes  Grey  and  The 
Tenant  of   Wildfell   Hall.    Shirley,    Villette,    and    The 
Professor  were   added  by   Charlotte   Bronte   to   Jane 
Eyre.     Villette  was,  perhaps,  her  most  finished  piece  of 
work,   but   Jane  Eyre  remains  the  most  notable  book 
written  by  any  of  the  three  sisters.     The  more  general 
interest  of  the  work,  at  the  date  and  in  the  place  of  its 
appearance,  lies  in  its  middle-class  mise-en-sdne.    Jane 


256     NINETEENTH  CENTUgY  LITERATURE 

Eyre  is  among  the  first  of  many  governesses  who  have 
won  or  failed  to  win  their  employers'  hearts  in  the  well- 
appointed  households  of  widowers  or  seeming  widowers. 
The  mystery-novel  of  the  old  sensational  romance  passed 
in  Charlotte  Bronte's  skilful  hands  into  the  novel  of  the 
domestic  type,  of  which  some  Victorian  novehsts  became 
such  voluminous  exponents.  The  type  degenerated  in 
their  hands,  though  the  succession  may  be  traced.  East 
Lynne  (1861),  for  instance,  by  Mrs.  Henry  Wood 
(1814-87),  owes  as  much  to  Jane  Eyre  as  the  perform- 
ance of  a  provincial  actor  can  owe  to  the  example  of  a 
genuine  artist. 


IV. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  novel  of  ordinary  life,  dealing 
with  the  fate  and  conduct  of  everyday  men  and  women, 
can  concentrate  on  one  of  two  things,  on  character,  or  on 
incident.  The  greater  novelists  of  the  age  were  devoted, 
with  more  or  less  philosophy,  to  the  study  of  character, 
in  its  infinite  interplay.  Four  of  these  may  detain  us  : 
WilHam  Makepeace  Thackeray  (1811-63),  George  Eliot 
(Mary  Ann  (Evans)  Cross,  1819-80),  George  Meredith 
(6.  1837),  and  Thomas  Hardy  (6.  1840). 
Trollope.  In  the  same  class  was  Anthony  Trollope  (1815-82),  a 
member  of  a  literary  family,  whose  interest  in  character 
was  mainly  confined  to  the  ecclesiastical  society  of  a 
cathedral  town  and  diocese.  His  series  of  Barchester 
novels — '  Barchester  '  was  more  or  less  Winchester  ;  and 
'  Barsetshire  '  more  or  less  Hampshire — ,  which  include 


THE  NOVEL  257 

The  Warden,  Barchester  Towers,  Doctor  Thome,  Framley 
Parsonage,  The  Small  House  at  Allington  and  The  Last 
Chronicle  of  Barset,  ranging  from  1855  to  1867,  are  quite 
excellent  in  their  kind,  which  may,  perhaps,  be  described 
as  the  best  kind  of  an  unambitious  type.  The  interest  in 
who  would  be  bishop,  who  would  take  charge  of  Hiram's 
Hospital,  what  would  the  archdeacon  say,  what  would 
the  bishop's  chaplain  do  next,  and  other  questions  of  this 
sort,  is  found  to  be  less  apt  to  wane  under  Trollope's 
confident  guidance  than  seems  intrinsically  probable. 
The  same  people  recur  throughout  the  series  in  various 
degrees  of  prominence,  and  one  or  two  of  them — Mrs. 
Proudie  especially — belong  to  the  republic  of  comedy. 

Undeniably  citizens  of  that  repubUc  are  the  character- 
types  of  Thackeray,  George  Eliot,  Meredith  and  Hardy. 
Thackeray,  unlike  Dickens,  with  whom  he  is  often  com-  Thack- 
pared,  though  they  had  little  in  common  save  the  age  ^  ' 
in  which  they  wrote,  belonged  to  a  good  family  and  was 
educated  at  Charterhouse — long  before  its  migration  to 
Godalming — and  Trinity,  Cambridge.  An  early  loss  of 
fortune  threw  him  on  his  own  resources.  These  were, 
fortunately,  multifarious  and  distinguished.  He  was  at 
once  a  draughtsman  and  a  writer,  a  caricaturist  in  both 
arts,  a  humourist,  a  romanticist,  and  a  student  of  history, 
especially  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Two  of  these 
tastes  were  combined  in  an  admirable  volume  of  lectures, 
English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  There 
were  two  or  three  Sketch-boohs,  the  Paris  volame  of  1840, 
the  Irish  volume  of  1843,  and  From  Cornhill  to  Cairo 
(1846),  which  afiorded  scope  to  his  versatility.  He  was 
17 


258  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

an  early  contributor  to  Fraser's  Magazine,  the  wisely 
enterprising  monthly  which  encouraged  Carlyle  and 
Ruskin,  and  likewise  to  Punch,  which  published  The 
Book  of  Snobs,  the  laughable  Yellowplush  memoirs  of  life 
below  stairs,  and  much  of  Thackeray's  good  verse.  Legi- 
timate laughter  is  also  provided  by  his  burlesques  and 
parodies  of  novelists'  mannerisms  in  Novels  by  Eminent 
Hands — G.  P.  R.  James,  Bulwer  Lytton,  and  others — , 
and  there  is  a  large  amount  of  miscellaneous  writings. 

But  Thackeray's  reputation  rests  on  the  few  finely- 
imagined  novels  which  he  wrote  in  the  fifteen  years  before 
hissudden  and  earlydeath.  These  are  Vanity Fair{184:S), 
Pendennis  (1850),  Esmond  (1852),  The  Newcom^s  (1855), 
and  The  Virginians  (1859).  Then  came  a  visit  to 
America,  where  he  lectured  on  The  Four  Georges.  On 
his  return  he  took  up  the  editorship  of  The  Cornhill 
Magazine,  for  which  he  wrote  Lovel  the  Widower  and  The 
Adventures  of  Philip,  and  started  a  characteristic  series 
of  Roundabout  Papers.  He  was  writing  Denis  Duval, 
his  last  novel,  when  he  died. 

His  books  fall  easily  into  two  groups,  with  one  pre- 
dominant in  each.  Esmond  is  supreme  in  the  class  of 
eighteenth-century  romances,  to  which  The  Virginians, 
its  sequel,  belonged,  and  Denis  Duval  was  to  belong  ;  and 
Vanity  Fair  is  supreme  in  the  class  of  novels  of  contem- 
porary manners,  which  include  the  rest  of  his  fiction. 
The  predominance  of  Esmond  is  undisputed.  It  is  the 
finest  picture  we  possess  of  social  life  in  the  age  of  Queen 
Anne.  Beatrix,  its  heroine,  is  pourtrayed,  or  is  suffered 
to  pourtray  herself,  in  all  her  woman's  variability  ;  and 


THE  NOVEL  259 

the  plot  was  contrived  to  arouse  genuine  passion  and 
emotion.  Further,  the  writing  afforded  the  fullest  oppor- 
tunities for  Thackeray's  mingled  grace  and  humour,  for 
the  reflective,  infinitely  kindly,  clear-sighted,  sometimes 
stern,  never  cynical,  and  always  warm  and  human 
moralizing  which  marked  his  leisurely  style.  The 
History  of  Henry  Esmond,  Esquire,  Colonel  in  the  Service 
of  Her  Majesty  Queen  Anne — to  give  this  great  romance 
its  full  title — is  the  finest  historical  novel  which  English 
literature  possesses. 

At  the  same  time,  the  vein  which  he  worked  in  Vanity 
Fair  and  other  novels  is  capable  of  more  valuable  spoils. 
It  is  indisputably  a  great  feat  to  revive  the  life  of  the 
past.  To  keep  the  present  alive  is  as  indisputably 
greater.  To  apply  imagination  to  the  actual,  and  to 
depict  the  romance  in  reality,  is  the  highest  task  offered 
to  a  novelist.  Poor  novels  are  far  too  many,  and  far  too 
easy  to  produce.  The  rubble  lies  on  the  surface,  and 
may  be  sifted  by  any  comer.  But  those  who  are  patient 
to  go  down  into  the  deeps  of  the  mine  return  with  hands- 
ful  of  shining  ore,  as  precious  as  poetry  itself.  Good 
novels  are  few  and  far  between.  They  add  not  only  to 
enjoyment,  but  also  to  knowledge  and  wisdom.  The 
final  test  of  a  good  novel  is  its  power  affecting  conduct. 
It  is  not  enough  that  it  should  take  the  reader,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  out  of  himself.  It  must  teach  him  truths 
of  human  conduct.  It  must  interpret  his  experience  to 
his  understanding.  It  must  provide  him  with  a  standard 
and  criterion,  by  which  to  raise  his  own  action.  It  must 
summon  him  from  what  he  sees  to  the  moral  aspect  in 


26o     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

which  he  should  see  it.  The  difierent  types  of  selfishness 
of  George  Osborne,  senior  and  junior,  appeal  powerfully 
from  their  acts  to  the  imagination  which  represents  them  : 
'  Darkness  came  down  on  the  field  and  city  :  and  Amelia 
was  praying  for  George,  who  was  lying  on  his  face,  dead, 
with  a  bullet  through  his  heart '.  The  terse  reticence  of 
the  statement  emphasizes  the  moral  of  the  tragedy. 
Note,  too,  the  study  of  Becky  Sharp,  the  most  sympathetic 
adventuress  who  ever  hved  in  an  English  novel.  Her 
whole  career  is  a  failure.  Amelia,  for  all  her  tears,  is 
not  worsted  at  the  end  :  George's  compromising  letter 
is  the  bilht  doux  of  his  widow's  second  marriage  ;  Sir 
Pitt  goes  back  to  his  good  Jane  ;  Rawdon  Crawley,  the 
too  fond  husband,  rises  to  manhood  at  the  crisis,  and  is 
redeemed  by  his  love  of  his  son.  Nothing  ignoble  comes  to 
greatness,  nothing  good  suffers  enduring  hurt,  nothing 
remediable  but  has  its  opportunity.  The  point  is,  to  see 
things  in  the  right  light,  to  measure  facts  in  their  due 
proportion,  and  to  be  certain  of  the  values  attaching  to 
them.  Conduct-values  are  a  novelist's  sphere  of  interest ; 
their  delineation,  typically,  is  his  function. 

Test  Thackeray  by  this,  and  his  supremacy  is  clear. 
Apart  from  the  purple  passages  which  everybody  knows 
— Rawdon  Crawley's  meeting  with  Lord  Steyne,  the 
first  love-episode  of  Pendennis,  Colonel  Newcome's  last 
Adsum — ,  we  recall  type  after  type  stamped  with  the 
impress  of  truth.  A  great  novelist  works  like  a  Royal 
Commission,  whose  reference  is  life  itself.  He  hears 
evidence  and  records  it ;  he  lets  his  witnesses  talk ; 
and   his   '  findings ',   or  conclusions,   serve    as    points 


THE  NOVEL  261 

of  departure  in  the  region  of  conduct.  '  This  was 
decided  by  Becky  Sharp '  ;  '  that  is  the  Jos  Sedley 
fallacy  '  ;  'by  this  road  Dobbin  was  undone  '  ;  '  that 
is  an  entry  from  Blanche  Amory's  diary '  :  almost 
unconsciously  we  store  these  gathered  experiences 
in  our  minds,  and  start  our  judgment  of  action  with 
the  gain  of  a  fresh  set  of  precedents.  Further,  it 
was  Thackeray's  talent,  and  the  good  fortune  of  his 
readers,  to  adorn  his  narrative  with  little  essays — 
little  sermons,  in  the  Horatian  sense — ,  which  are 
pleasant  in  themselves,  and  which  help  us  across  the 
bridges  of  the  long  periods  covered  by  his  tales.  For 
Thackeray  is  among  the  masters — Mr.  William  De 
Morgan,  a  recent  example,  belongs  to  a  not  much  later 
generation — who  deal  not  with  episodes  but  with  careers. 
In  this  section,  necessarily  cramped,  little  space  can 
be  spared  for  illustration,  but  one  extract  may  be 
given  to  show  the  leisured  ease  of  Thackeray.  The 
broad  canvas  on  which  he  worked  admitted  a  feeling 
for  perspective.  Thus,  death,  when  it  occurred,  was 
respected,  even  in  the  person  of  a  subordinate  char- 
acter. For  the  '  star '  system  of  modern  novels, 
reducing  every  one  to  insignificance  save  a  central  lime- 
lit  figure,  and  stupefying  judgment  by  an  accumula- 
tion of  '  atmospheric '  effects,  was  not  the  method  of 
these  masters.  Our  example  is  the  death  of  Mr.  Sedley 
from  Vanity  Fair,  chapter  Ixi : 

Which  of  the  dead  are  most  tenderly  and  passionately 
deplored  ?     Those  who  love  the  survivors  the  least, 


262     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

I  believe.  .  .  .  Perhaps  as  he  was  lying  awake  there, 
his  life  may  have  passed  before  him — ^his  early  hopeful 
struggles,  his  manly  successes  and  prosperity,  his 
downfall  in  his  declining  years,  and  his  present  helpless 
condition — no  chance  of  revenge  against  Fortune, 
which  had  had  the  better  of  him — neither  name  nor 
money  to  bequeath — a  spent-out  bootless  life  of  defeat 
and  disappointment,  and  the  end  here !  Which,  I 
wonder,  brother  reader,  is  the  better  lot,  to  die  pros- 
perous and  famous,  or  poor  and  disappointed  ?  To 
have,  and  to  be  forced  to  yield ;  or  to  sink  out  of  life, 
having  played  and  lost  the  game  ?  ...  So  there  came 
one  morning  and  sunrise,  when  all  the  world  got  up 
and  set  about  its  various  works  and  pleasures,  with  the 
exception  of  old  John  Sedley,  who  was  not  to  fight 
with  fortune,  or  to  hope  or  scheme  any  more. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  this  mood  of  reflection 
is  evoked  by  the  death  of  an  old  man,  who  is  only  the 
father  of  the  second  heroine,  and  who  is  at  least  sixty 
when  we  meet  him  first. 


V. 

Nature 

and  man.     In  passing  from  Dickens  and  Thackeray  to  George 

Eliot,   George  Meredith  and  Thomas  Hardy,  we  are 

at  once  conscious  of  a  change.     Its  precise  character 

is  elusive.    It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  personages  of 

Dickens  tend  to  stand  out  from  their  surroundings,  and 

those  of  Meredith  to  sink  into  them.     It  is  easy,  too, 

to  say  that  Thackeray  is  better  humoured  than  Thomas 


THE  NOVEL  263 

Hardy,  and  George  Eliot  more  learned  than  Thackeray. 
But  the  true  difference  is  not  external.  It  will  be 
found  mainly  to  depend  on  the  younger  writers'  atti- 
tude towards  nature.  Half -unconsciously,  they  tended 
to  refer  phenomena  to  design,  and  to  adopt  the  Words- 
worthian  standard,  measuring  man  by  nature  :  '  If 
this  be  nature's  holy  plan,  Have  I  not  reason  to  lament 
What  man  has  made  of  man  ?  '  According  to  the 
manner  of  their  temperament,  they  wrote  as  reasoners 
on  this  theme.  They  argued  by  types  about  ideas. 
They  found  their  chief  inspiration  in  the  conflict 
between  nature  and  man.  Nature's  stillness  invaded 
by  men's  voices,  nature's  purposes  opposed  by  men's 
conventions,  nature's  resources  misapplied  by  men's 
greed,  provided  matter  enough  for  lament  and  irony 
in  representation. 

Thus,  these  writers  introduced  a  new  mark  in  English 
fiction.  Theirs  is  not  the  old  '  return  to  nature ', 
traced  plausibly  to  Rousseau,  and  leading  to  the  extra- 
vagance of  sentiment  in  which  Mrs.  RadclifEe  indulged  ^. 
It  is  not  the  pure  descriptive  writing,  in  which  Sir 
Walter  Scott  excelled,  and  which  Dickens,  Thackeray, 
Kingsley,  Charles  Reade  and  others  could  command, 
when  the  adventures  of  their  heroes  required  it.  It  is 
not  detached  from  human  fortune,  like  a  line  which 
never  meets  its  parallel.  It  is  not  illustrative,  decora- 
tive, or  incidental,  but  it  is  essential  to  the  human 
factors  in  the  piece.  These  writers,  and  others  who 
succeeded  them — Richard  Blackmore,  Eden  Phillpotts, 

^  See  p.  45,  supra. 


264     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

in  our  day — ,  sought  nature  as  the  universal  mother  ; 
they  did  not  separate  her  from  her  works.  As  Walter 
Pater  acutely  said  of  Wordsworth :  by  subduing 
man  to  the  level  of  nature,  they  raised  nature  to  the 
level  of  human  thought. 

It  is  well  to  seize  this  at  the  outset,  and  three  simple 
examples  may  be  submitted  : 

(1)  It  was  a  still  afternoon — the  golden  light  was 
lingering  languidly  among  the  upper  boughs,  only 
glancing  down  here  and  there  on  the  purple  pathway 
and  its  edge  of  faintly-sprinkled  moss  :  an  afternoon 
in  which  destiny  disguises  her  cold  awful  face  behind  a 
hazy  radiant  veil,  encloses  us  with  warm  downy  wings, 
and  poisons  us  with  violet-scented  breath. 

George  Eliot,  Adam  Bede,  ch.  xii. 

(2)  The  little  skylark  went  up  above  her,  all  song, 
to  the  smooth  southern  cloud  lying  along  the  blue : 
from  a  dewy  copse  dark  over  her  nodding  hat  the 
blackbird  fluted,  calling  to  her  with  thrice  mellow  note  : 
the  kingfisher  flashed  emerald  out  of  green  osiers  : 
a  bow-winged  heron  travelled  aloft,  seeking  solitude. 
.  .  .  Surrounded  by  the  green  shaven  meadows,  the 
pastoral  summer  buzz,  the  weir-fall's  thundering  white, 
amid  the  breath  and  beauty  of  wild  flowers,  she  was 
a  bit  of  lovely  human  life  in  a  fair  setting  ;  a  terrible 
attraction.  .  .  .  Stiller  and  stiller  grew  nature,  as  at 
the  meeting  of  two  electric  clouds. 

George  Meredith,  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel, 

ch.  xiv. 

(3)  On  the  lonely  hills  and  dales  her  quiescent  glide 
was  of  a  piece  with  the  element  she  moved  in.    Her 


THE  NOVEL  265 

flexuous  and  stealthy  figure  became  an  integral  part 
of  the  scene.  At  times  her  whimsical  fancy  would 
intensify  natural  processes  around  her  till  they  seemed 
a  part  of  her  own  story.  Rather  they  became  a  part  of 
it ;  for  the  world  is  only  a  psychological  phenomenon, 
and  what  they  seemed  they  were.  The  midnight 
airs  and  gusts,  moaning  amongst  the  tightly-wrapped 
buds  and  bark  of  the  winter  twigs,  were  formulae 
of  bitter  reproach.  A  wet  day  was  the  expression  of 
irremediable  grief  at  her  weakness  in  the  mind  of 
some  vague  ethical  being  whom  she  could  not  class 
definitely  as  the  God  of  her  childhood,  and  could  not 
comprehend  as  any  other. 

Thomas  Hardy,  Tess  of  the  Z)'  Urhervilles,  xiii. 

The  motive  in  all  three  is  fairly  clear.  In  (1)  George  A  new 
EHot  associates  nature's  illusory  calm  with  the  dis- 
guised awfulness  of  destiny.  Man  is  poisoned  with 
violet-scented  breath  ;  and,  in  the  sequel  of  the  scene, 
when  Hetty  (in  chapter  xv)  is  prodigal  of  her  beauty 
to  the  moon,  we  are  vividly  reminded  of  this  sensation : 
'  There  was  an  invisible  spectator  whose  eye  rested 
on  her  like  morning  on  the  flowers.  His  soft  voice 
was  saying  over  and  over  again  the  pretty  things  she 
had  heard  in  the  wood  ;  his  arm  was  round  her,  and  the 
deHcate  rose- scent  of  his  hair  was  with  her  still'. 
The  poison  which  nature  had  conspired  with  man 
to  distil — the  poison  of  a  mood  simply  natural,  and 
forbidden  by  social  forms — had  entered  into  Hetty's 
blood.  In  (2)  the  meeting  of  Richard  and  Lucy  is 
subdued  to  the  level  of  design.  Meredith  removes 
all  meretriciousness.    The  lovers  float  on  the  stream  of 


266     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

natural  processes,  the  mere  drift  of  inevitable  laws. 
Their  union  is  accomplished  without  collision.  It  had 
to  be,  and  therefore  it  is,  while  the  skylark  goes  up, 
all  song,  and  the  blackbird  flutes  his  mellow  note, 
and  the  kingfisher  flashes  out  of  the  osiers,  and  the 
wild  flowers  breathe  their  beauty.  Nothing  in  nature 
is  disturbed,  and  this  abstract  idealization  of  the 
idyl  intensifies  the  tragedy  which  ensues,  when 
humanity,  reduced  to  nature,  is  deUvered  back  to  the 
judgment  of  man,  or  even  to  the  serio-comic  judgment 
of  Mrs.  Berry  in  Richard  Feverel :  '  Kissing  don't  last ; 
cookery  do '.  In  (3)  the  identity  is  yet  completer, 
'  for  the  world  is  only  a  psychological  phenomenon, 
and  what  they  seemed  they  were '.  Tess  emerges 
from  the  scenery  of  Wessex,  like  Aphrodite  from  the 
waves,  a  very  product  of  its  soil.  As  it  made  her,  so 
she  became.  No  God  interfered  with  the  waste  or 
use  of  nature's  material.  Day  by  day  the  cows 
were  milked  amid  the  sweets  of  the  upland  farm, 
and  if  nature  exacted  other  toll  from  the  sweets  of 
her  daily  making,  her  '  vulpine  slyness ',  as  Hardy 
calls  it,  was  greater  than  the  resistance  of  men's 
God. 

The  moral  is  that  man  must  be  his  own  God,  if  he 
will  find  strength  in  the  God  of  man,  thus  reversing 
full-circle  the  delusive  philosophy  of  Pope  as  to  the 
proper  study  of  mankind  being  man.  For  the  novel 
of  the  nineteenth  century  in  the  hands  of  these  three 
masters  takes  on  an  austerer  note,  when  it  applies  to 
man  and  nature  '  that  fatal  knife,  deep  questioning, 


THE  NOVEL  267 

which  probes  to  endless  dole '.  Deeper  and  deeper  it 
probed  to  the  very  pith  and  marrow  of  the  problem, 
till  we  cry,  first,  Who  is  to  blame  ?  and,  at  last,  What 
is  the  remedy  ? 

But,  might  some  say,  where  was  Tess's  guardian 
angel  ?  Where  was  the  providence  of  her  simple  faith  ? 
Perhaps,  like  that  other  god  of  whom  the  ironical 
Tishbite  spoke,  he  was  talking,  or  he  was  pursuing, 
or  he  was  on  a  journey,  or  peradventure  he  was  sleeping 
and  not  to  be  awaked.  Why  it  was  that  upon  this 
beautiful  feminine  tissue,  sensitive  as  gossamer,  and 
practically  blank  as  snow  as  yet,  there  should  have 
been  traced  such  a  coarse  pattern  as  it  was  doomed 
to  receive  ;  why  so  often  the  coarse  appropriates  the 
finer  thus,  the  wrong  man  the  woman,  the  wrong 
woman  the  man,  many  thousand  years  of  analytical 
philosophy  have  failed  to  explain  to  our  sense  of 
order.  .  .  .  Though  to  visit  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
upon  the  children  may  be  a  morality  good  enough  for 
divinities,  it  is  scorned  by  average  human  nature. 

Tess  of  the  D'  Vrhervilles,  xi. 

The  earlier  novelists,  such  as  Lytton  and  Dickens, 
in  their  fine  zeal  for  undoing  social  wrong  and  for  spread- 
ing the  canopy  of  freedom,  had  attacked  certain  definite 
evils  which  laws  or  kings  could  cause  or  cure.  Meredith 
and  Hardy  particularly  have  sought  to  found  human 
liberties  on  a  deeper  sanction  still,  and  to  undo,  not 
social  anomalies,  but  the  failures  that  offend  '  our 
sense  of  order '.  They  have  availed  themselves  of 
every    means    of    increasing    knowledge ;     they   have 


268     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

pressed  into  their  service  the  new  (or  the  remodelled) 
sciences  of  physiology,  morphology  and  psychology, 
and  from  these  they  have  appealed  to  God  in  heaven, 
as  revealed — or,  rather,  as  depicted  by  the  interpreters 
of  revelation — in  pre-scientific  times.  In  other  words, 
these  novelists,  turned  seers,  have  attempted,  together 
with  the  greatest  poets,  to  reconcile  those  old  opponents 
in  the  grievously  mistaken  conflict  between  science 
and  faith,  knowledge  and  belief,  seen  and  unseen,  sense 
and  soul.  They  have  been  as  fearless  in  liberating 
the  soul  as  the  men  of  science  in  liberating  the  senses. 
They  have  struck  through  the  disguises  of  half-truths, 
imperfect  knowledge,  accepted  formulae,  tradition, 
and  sentiment,  to  the  evidence  of  reality  itself,  the  one 
sound  basis  of  the  ideal.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say 
that  they  have  succeeded  in  all  that  they  undertook. 
George  Eliot  is  sometimes  pedantic,  George  Meredith 
is  sometimes  obscure  from  very  excess  of  light,  and 
Thomas  Hardy's  fulness  of  vision  is  sometimes  ob- 
structed by  gloom.  But  this,  at  least,  may  be  said  : 
they  are  the  friends  of  the  bridegroom,  if  not  the  very 
he  that  cometh.  '  Ring  out,  and  ring  in ',  cried 
Tennyson,  in  In  Memoriam,  cvi,  though  he  created  no 
tjrpes  of  the  new  evangel  : 

Ring  out  the  feud  of  rich  and  poor, 
Ring  in  redress  to  all  mankind.  .  .  . 

Ring  out  old  shapes  of  foul  disease ; 

Ring  out  the  narrowing  lust  of  gold ; 

Ring  out  the  thousand  wars  of  old. 
Ring  in  the  thousand  years  of  peace. 


THE  NOVEL  269 

Ring  in  the  valiant  man  and  free. 

The  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand ; 

Ring  out  the  darkness  of  the  land, 
Ring  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be. 

And  these  writers,  on  the  meridian  of  tlie  century  of 
emancipation,  sougiit,  by  their  deep  exposure  of  phases 
of  moral  disorder,  to  ring  in  the  Christ  who  was  to  be, 
and  who  should  give  laws  to  the  social  conscience  of 
the  future. 

It  is  not  possible  to  discuss  their  many  novels  sever-  Some 
ally,  but  one  or  two  points  may  be  selected  as  guides  features. 
to  such  a  study.  There  is,  first,  recalling  Wordsworth, 
the  greatest  pure  force  in  English  letters  since  the 
industrial  revolution,  their  common  recourse  to  the  soil. 
Peasants,  journeymen  and  humble  people  walk  securely 
through  their  pages.  Tragedy  is  not  less  tragic  because 
royal  and  great  personages  are  not  affected.  It  is 
precisely  because  the  sphere  of  fate  is  outside  of  the 
sphere  of  parliament  that  the  decrees  of  fate  become  so 
intensely  real,  and  so  wholly  independent  of  shib- 
boleths. All  nature  is  animate  and  vocal,  and  has 
equivalence  of  worth.  Hetty,  Lucy  and  Tess  are 
queens  by  divine  right,  not  by  man's.  Another  point 
is  the  attraction  to  these  novelists  of  periods  of  liberty. 
George  Eliot's  Romola  and  Felix  Holt,  Meredith's 
Vittoria  and  The  Tragic  Comedians  are  instances  of 
this  gravitation.  Large  ideas  require  spacious  air. 
A  third  point  is  the  dominance  of  woman.  Roughly 
reckoned,  half  the  mistakes  which  modern  society  has 
made  in  formulating  its  ideals  of  civilization  can  be 


270     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

traced  to  its  conception  of  the  woman's  part.  The 
educated  woman  of  the  eighteenth  century  shook  ofi 
the  veil  of  the  Middle  Ages  only  to  represent  the  role 
of  a  '  blue-stocking '  or  a  '  rake '  (Pope,  Moral  Essays, 
ii.  215,  and  'passim).  The  woman-type  deHneated  by 
Tennyson  as  a  kind  of  compromise  between  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  Middle-Victorian  age  has  been 
sufficiently  displayed  in  our  quotations  in  the  last 
section  from  The  Princess  and  the  Idylls  of  the 
King.  These  summaries  are,  of  course,  very  general, 
and  suffer  in  exactness  accordingly ;  but  the  re- 
construction of  women's  part  in  life,  attempted  so 
brilliantly  on  the  stages  of  George  Eliot,  Thomas 
Hardy,  and,  above  all,  of  George  Meredith,  is  the 
more  remakable  by  contrast.  Emilia,  Renee, 
Clotilde,  Clara  Middleton,  Diana  and  the  rest  are 
new  women  in  the  best  sense  :  their  appeal  is  to 
men  regenerate,  and  to  a  revised  social  system. 
Character,  Meredith  seems  to  say,  has  been  main- 
tained at  its  highest  in  woman's  soul,  undistracted 
by  the  shifts  and  compromises  which  experience  has 
exacted  from  human  nature.  It  is  for  men  to  repair 
to  that  limpid  stream  of  moral  and  intellectual  refresh- 
ment. Finally — in  a  hasty  survey — the  chorus  is 
important  in  these  writers.  The  return  of  fiction  to 
philosophy  is  marked  by  a  deep  reflectiveness  on  the 
part  of  its  practitioners.  Meredith  went  so  far  as  to 
personify  gossip,  and  to  introduce  characters  whose 
sole  metier  is  to  be  sententious  ;  and  George  Eliot 
and  Thomas  Hardy — the  one  sometimes  rather  ponder- 


THE  NOVEL  271 

ously,    and    the    other    rather    pessimistically — were 
addicted  to  the  same  good  habit. 

The  foregoing  paragraphs  should  help  us  to  read 
these  novelists  with  advantage,  and  no  epitome  of  their 
books  can  succeed  in  doing  more.  They  represent 
together  a  new  force  in  the  honourable  history  of 
English  fiction,  and  a  brief  word  is  now  due  to  the 
distinctions  that  divide  them.  George  Eliot  was,  George 
as  is  well  known,  the  pen-name  of  Mary  Ann  Evans  °*' 
(1819-80) .  Her  early  bent  was  towards  philosophy. 
She  translated  two  German  treatises  on  the  philosophy 
of  religion,  as  diploma-pieces,  as  it  were,  of  .her  Uni- 
tarianism.  Later,  she  became  a  contributor  to  The 
Westminster  Review,  and  a  friend  of  Mill  and  his  circle. 
In  that  circle  was  George  Henry  Lewes  (1817-78),  a 
philosopher  and  historian  of  philosophy,  who  belonged 
by  profession  to  the  highest  rank  of  journalists.  Miss 
Evans  formed  a  union  with  Lewes  which  lasted  till  his 
death,  and  the  irregular  nature  of  which  typified  the 
courage  and  sincerity  with  which  she  held  her  opinions. 
Two  years  after  his  death,  and  a  few  months  before  her 
own,  she  was  married  to  John  Cross,  who  published 
her  Life  and  Letters.  The  liberal  bias  of  her  mind,  the 
frank  acceptance  of  truths  which  had  convinced  her 
reason,  and  the  pursuit  of  advanced  lines  of  thought 
which  constantly  engaged  her  intellectual  energy,  are 
all  to  be  traced  in  the  novels,  to  which,  with  curiously 
feminine  ductility,  she  turned  at  Lewes's  instance 
from  her  more  directly  philosophic  work.  Daniel 
Deronda,  for  example,  to  take  her  latest  novel  first,  is 


272     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

a  remarkable  account  of  modem  Jewish  idealism,  and 
even  more  exacting  in  its  claims  on  George  Eliot's 
conscientious  methods  was  her  Romola — a  novel  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  is  a  brilliant 
(though  a  somewhat  darkly  brilliant)  study  of  a  brother 
and  a  sister,  and  the  subsidiary  characters  of  aunts, 
uncles,  and  others  are  etched  with  mordant  force. 
Middlemarch,  Felix  Holt,  Silas  Marner,  and  the  master- 
piece, Adam  Bede,  are  the  remaining  chief  novels 
between  the  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  and  the  Opinions  of 
Theofhrastus  Such  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of 
her  career. 
George  What  George  EUot  gave  to  learning  George  Meredith 

gave  to  humour  ;  and  it  is,  perhaps,  due  to  our  climate 
as  much  as  to  anything  else  that  the  philosophy  of 
George  Eliot  appealed  to  the  taste  of  the  reading  public 
many  years  before  the  humour  of  George  Meredith. 
His  intense  love  of  the  open  air,  his  almost  Greek  sense 
of  the  influence  of  the  body  on  the  mind,  and  a  certain 
instinctive  naturalism,  which  did  not  so  much  oppose 
conventionalism  as  leave  conventions  •  aside,  were 
combined  with  a  difficult  style  of  writing  and  a  keener 
insight  than  is  common  into  motives  of  action  to  repel 
the  novel-reading  public  ;  and  it  is  only  at  a  com- 
paratively recent  date  that  Meredith  has  inherited  his 
fame  as  a  paramount  master  of  fiction.  The  dis- 
covery is  still  gaining  ground,  and  even  yet  it  is  not 
fully  realized  how  much  of  the  difficulty  is  due  to  his 
search  for  expression  corresponding  to  thought  in 
advance  of  the  resources  of  language  in  his  day.     In 


THE  NOVEL  273 

order  to  convey  ideas,  he  put  all  nature  under  levy, 
exacting  approximate  representations  of  what  he 
sought  to  express  in  pictures  sometimes  contiguous, 
sometimes  actually  superimposed.  There  are  sentences 
in  Meredith  which  are  as  confusing  as  a  palimpsest 
with  the  first  impression  partly  legible  :  the  first  and 
second  impressions  (in  his  instance)  being  not  of  writing 
but  of  thought.  A  metaphor  is  suggested  by  a 
metaphor,  and  replaces  it  before  it  is  complete.  This 
sounds  more  serious  than  it  is,  and,  in  practice,  the 
brilliance  of  Meredith  finds  a  lucid  way  to  the  imagina- 
tion without  fatiguing  the  intellect  overmuch.  His 
series  of  romantic  novels,  and  particularly,  perhaps, 
Richard  Feverel,  The  Egoist,  Harry  Richmond,  Beau- 
champ^s  Career,  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  and  that 
extraordinarily  successful  study  of  the  tailor-gentle- 
man, Evan  Harrington,  with  their  subtle  characteriza- 
tion, their  exalted  yet  reasonable  idealism,  and  their 
interpenetration  with  natural  lore,  raised  the  power 
and  function  of  the  novel  to  a  height  which  it  had  not 
attained  before. 

This  level  was  maintained  by  Thomas  Hardy,  who,  Thomas 
like  Meredith,  is  poet  as  well  as  novelist,  and  who  in 
recent  years  has  published  a  Napoleonic  epic-drama 
in  three  parts  entitled  The  Dynasts.  Among  his  novels, 
Under  the  Greenwood  Tree,  A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes,  and 
Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd — possibly  the  best  one  of  all 
— belong  most  obviously  to  his  first  period,  The  Mayor  of 
Casterbridge  and  The  Woodlanders  to  his  second  period, 
and  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  and  Jude  the  Obscure  to 
18 


274  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

his  third,  the  difference  being  marked  by  a  deepening 
of  the  romantic  interpretation  of  reality.  Especially 
valuable  in  Hardy's  novels  are  his  arrest  of  decaying 
rural  pastimes  and  the  salt  of  his  rustic  wit. 


VI. 

There  are  still  a  few  categories  to  be  considered. 

Charles  Among  past  masters  who  must  not  be  omitted  is 
^  ®"  Charles  Reade  (1814-84),  who  wrote  plays  alone  and 
with  Tom  Taylor  (1817-80),  a  journalist  and  an  editor 
of  Punch,  and  whose  best  novel  is  historical  (fifteenth 
century),  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth.  Peg  Woffington 
(1852)  was  novelized  from  a  drama,  reversing  the 
common  procedure,  and  It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend 
(1856)  was  remarkable  at  a  date  just  before  Dickens 
for  its  sociological  motive  in  exposing  the  evils  of 
prison-discipline . 

Wilkie  Wilkie  Collins  (1824-89)  was  more  intimately  con- 
°  ^'^^*  nected  with  Dickens  as  a  collaborator  in  one  or  two 
minor  works  and  in  No  Thoroughfare  (1867).  His  most 
famous  independent  novels  are  The  Woman  in  White 
and  The  Moonstone,  and  his  skill  in  weaving  detective- 
mysteries  has  been  repeated  with  variations  (based 
mainly  on  French  models)  in  the  '  Sherlock  Holmes ' 
series  of  Sir  A.  Conan  Doyle. 

Sport  Still  avoiding  the  mere  catalogue,  reference  is  due  to 
the  group  of  Victorian  novelists  who  dealt  with  ad- 
venture and  sport.     Between  the  two  is  F.  E.  Smedley 


and  ad- 
venture 


THE  NOVEL  275 

(1818-64),  author  of  Frank  Fairleigh  and  Lewis  Arundel 
and  one  or  two  similar  books  written  in  the  brightest 
spirits  out  of  a  background  of  acute  suffering.  Pure 
sport  attracted  Kobert  Surtees  (1803-64),  of  JorrocJcs's 
Jaunts,  Handley  Cross  and  Ask  Mamma.  These 
writers  had  the  advantage  of  the  aid  of  the  well-known 
draughtsmen  of  the  time,  John  Leech  and  Hablot  K. 
Browne  ('  Phiz '),  Their  succession  through  G.  J. 
Whyte-Melville  (1821-78)  to  the  sporting-novelists  of 
our  own  day  need  not  detain  us  here.  Adventure  is 
represented  by  William  Harrison  Ainsworth  (1805-82), 
and  the  Irish  writers,  Samuel  Lover  (1797-1868)  and 
Charles  James  Lever  (1806-72),  who  all  belonged  to  a 
slightly  older  generation  ;  and  adventure,  dominantly 
naval,  and  mainly  intended  for  boys,  is  the  distinguishing 
mark  of  the  works  of  Frederic  Marryatt  (1792-1848), 
W.  H.  G.  Kingston  (1814-80),  Mayne  Keid  (1818-83), 
R.  M.  Ballantyne  (1825-94),  and  G.  A.  Henty,  recently 
dead.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  a  more  formal  artist 
of  this  craft,  and  a  great  writer  in  other  departments, 
is  commemorated  in  a  later  section. 


Vll. 

Of  living  writers  less  distant  from  their  prime  than 
George  Meredith  and  Thomas  Hardy  we  do  not  propose 
to  speak.  Many — the  majority,  perhaps — belong  to  the 
twentieth  century,  and  two  only  of  those  whose  repu- 
tation was  established  in  the  nineteenth  may  detain 


276     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

us  for  a  moment.     One  is  Mrs.  Humpliry  Ward,  and  the 
other  is  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling. 
Mrs.  Mrs.  Ward  belongs  by  birth  to  the  Arnold  family, 

Ward.  which  has  contributed  so  notably  to  the  serious  thought 
of  our  times.  Her  Robert  Elsmere  (1888)  was  the  first 
of  a  series  of  romances,  dealing  mainly  with  religion. 
It  attained,  and  maintains,  a  considerable  vogue, 
independently  of  its  appearance  in  a  period  of  religious 
doubt,  and  of  the  approval  which  it  won  from  Mr. 
Gladstone  for  its  theological  interest.  It  was  followed 
in  the  same  line  by  David  Grieve  and  Helheck  of  Bannis- 
dale.  Mrs.  Ward  then  turned  her  attention  to  politics 
and  sociology,  and  produced  in  Marcella  and  its  sequel 
Sir  George  Tressady  two  novels  which  are,  artistically, 
perhaps  her  most  finished  studies  of  strenuous  life  in 
the  higher  grades  of  society.  Her  later  books  have 
abandoned  to  some  extent  the  insistent  sense  of  purpose, 
and,  though  they  have  gained  not  a  little  in  spontaneity 
and  freshness,  they  have  missed  (in  the  opinion  of  some 
admirers)  the  force  and  vigour  of  her  earlier  works  ^. 

^  Women-novelists,  it  should  be  noted,  have  played  a  remarkable 
part  in  nineteenth-century  literature.  Jane  Austen,  Charlotte 
Bronte  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  open  a  list  of  names  which  includes  George 
Eliot,  among  the  dead,  Mrs.  Craik,  Charlotte  Yonge  and  Mrs.  Oliphant. 
Among  the  living,  Rhoda  Broughton  and  M.  E.  Braddon  (Mrs. 
Maxwell)  may  be  singled  out  as  veteran  favourites  ;  and,  if  Mary 
Johnston  and  Gertrude  Atherton  may  not  be  claimed  as  English- 
women, we  have  had  Mrs.  Craigie  (John  Oliver  Hobbes),  OHve 
Schreiner,  Amy  Levy,  and  we  have,  among  many  others,  Miss 
Cholmondeley,  Mrs.  Clifford,  Mrs.  de  la  Pasture,  George  Egerton, 
George  Fleming,  Mrs.  Blundell  (M.  E.  Francis),  Maxwell  Gray,  Miss 
Harraden,  Annie  Holdsworth,  Miss  Hunt,  Lucas  Malet,  Helen 
\Iathers,  Jean  Middlemass,  Rita,  Mrs.  F.  A.  Steel,  and  Mrs.  Woods. 


THE  NOVEL  277 

Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling's  star  is  likewise  too  near  its 
rising  for  a  detailed  criticism  to  be  seemly.  He  repre- 
sents a  phase  of  thought  which,  so  far,  seems  to  be  on 
the  wane,  and  which  is  especially  associated  with  the 
Imperial  sentiment  aroused  in  1897,  at  the  diamond 
jubilee  of  Queen  Victoria.  The  movement  was  neither 
as  strong  nor,  apparently,  as  enduring  as  the  Free 
Trade,  shop-window  ardour  which  found  its  tangible 
expression  in  the  Great  Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park  in 
the  early  years  of  the  Queen's  reign.  Still,  it  had  its 
vogue  and  its  voice  in  the  history  of  the  nation  and  its 
literature ;  and,  if  Ruskin  in  a  sense  was  the  opponent 
in  hterature  of  the  moral  and  economic  point  of  view 
represented  by  the  Crystal  Palace,  Mr.  William  Watson 
may  perhaps  be  taken  as  the  poetic  antitype  of  Mr, 
Kipling.  'The  Things  which  are  more  Excellent', 
for  example,  which  is  the  title  of  one  of  Mr.  Watson's 
poems,  may  fairly  be  contrasted  with  some  of  the 
militant  ditties  of  Mr.  Kipling's  patriotric  muse.  But 
with  this  movement  and  counter-movement,  the  critic 
of  literature,  as  such,  cannot  yet  be  concerned,  save 
only  to  note  that  Mr.  Kipling's  vigorous  writing  and 
his  genius  for  visualization  have  already  enriched 
English  literature  with  certain  x,T^\JuaTOL  Ig  as/.  '  The 
Finest  Story  in  the  World ',  reviving  the  experience 
of  a  Greek  galley-slave  ;  '  The  Ship  that  found  her- 
self ',  making  a  living  whole  of  the  separate  parts  of  a 
modern  ship  ;  Captains  Courageous,  The  Jungle-hooks, 
and  parts  of  Puck  of  Pookas  Hill,  together  with  the 
Indian  Kim  and  some  of  the  Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills, 


Bion. 


278     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

belong  to  no  phase  of  opinion  but  to  national  literature 
itself. 
Conclu-  It  would  be  pleasant  to  confess  to  a  few  personal 
predilections  among  the  novelists,  outside  the  greatest 
masters,  who  have  contributed  to  the  entertainment 
of  this  age.  There  was  James  Payn  (1830-98),  for 
example,  whose  long  series  of  novels,  never  great 
but  seldom  less  than  good,  seem  in  retrospect  par- 
ticularly typical  of  the  times  in  which  he  wrote.  There 
was  Mr.  F.  Marion  Crawford  (1854-1909)1,  with  his 
Cigarette-Maker's  Romance  and  his  excellent  Italian 
stories,  and  there  is  Mr.  Guthrie  (F.  Anstey)  who,  apart 
from  his  works  of  pure  humour,  has  given  us,  in  The 
GianCs  Robe  and  a  little  less  certainly  in  The  Pariah, 
two  novels  of  permanent  merit.  But  an  expression  of 
such  tastes  would  carry  us  too  far,  and  would  inevitably 
bring  us  to  the  border-line — obvious,  if  not  tangible — 
which  divides  the  nineteenth  century  from  its  successor. 
There  is  a  line  of  demarcation  between  the  two,  though 
it  would  be  difficult  to  define  it.  Perhaps  the  difference 
Ues  in  the  more  responsive  consciousness  of  the  present 
age.  More  delicate  feelings  are  tracked  to  more  subtle 
currents  of  physiology.  The  writing  is  cleverer  than 
it  was,  more  deliberately  clever,  that  is  to  say,  and  its 
robuster  qualities  are  disappearing.  But,  whatever 
direction  may  be  given  to  the  fiction  of  the  future  by 
writers  of  such  diverse  gifts  as  Mr.  le  Gallienne,  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw,  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  Mr.  Wells,  and 
other  modern  craftsmen,  this,  at  least,  is  clear  :  The 
^  Mr.  Crawfoid  died  while  tiiis  volume  was  in  the  press,  April  9, 1909. 


THE  NOVEL  279 

masters  of  the  novel  in  the  nineteenth  century  have 
illuminated  an  important  tract  of  time  more  thought- 
fully than  the  press,  more  thoroughly  than  the  historians, 
and  more  graphically  than  the  poets.  Their  work, 
in  the  mass,  is  to  be  regarded  as  an  enlightened  com- 
mentary on  the  times,  and,  in  detail,  it  is  to  be  enjoyed 
for  its  humour,  its  pathos,  its  tenderness,  its  noble 
standard  and  its  high  style. 


§4.  IMAGINATIVE  REASON. 


WE  return  to  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and    especially  to   that  kind  which,  like   the 
pictures  of  Watts,  appeals  to  '  the  imaginative  reason '  ^. 
Browning      Robert  Browning  (1812-89),  the  son  of  a  clerk  in  the 

and 

Tennyson.  Bank  of  England,  differed  in  every  respect  from  Tenny- 
son, except  only  in  the  dates  of  biography.  Pauline, 
his  first  volume,  appeared  only  three  years  later  than 
Tennyson's  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical.  Each  writer  con- 
tinued to  publish  at  fairly  frequent  intervals  there- 
after, and  poetic  society  tended  to  divide  itself  into 
Browningites  and  Tennysonians,  to  the  not  incon- 
siderable loss  of  the  true  appreciation  of  both  poets. 

They  were  alike,  too,  in  their  leave-taking  of  the 
world  which  they  had  benefited  so  much.     Browning's 

*  '  The  main  element  of  the  modern  spirit's  life  is  neither  the 
senses  and  understanding,  nor  the  heart  and  imagination ;  it  is 
the  imaginative  reason  '. 

Matthew  Aenold,  Essays  in  Criticism :  '  Pagan  and  Medieval 
Religious  Sentiment '. 

'  Whereas  the  Semitic  genius  placed  its  highest  spiritual  life  in 
the  religious  sentiment,  and  made  that  the  basis  of  its  poetry,  the 
Indo-European  genius  places  its  highest  spiritual  life  in  the  imagina- 
tive reason,  and  makes  that  the  basis  of  its  poetry  ', 

Id.,  Celtic  Literature,  vi. 
380 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  281 

'  Epilogue  '  in  Asolando  (publislied  on  the  day  of  his 
death)  appeared  almost  simultaneously  with  Tenny- 
son's '  Crossing  the  Bar '  in  his  Demeter  and  other 
Poems  (December,  1889).  These  two  brave  poems  of 
passing  struck  on  the  consciousness  of  their  generation 
with  a  readily  measurable  force.  Each  poet  had 
accompanied  the  nineteenth  century  from  the  Reform 
Act  and  the  accession  of  Queen  Victoria  to  her  Majesty's 
jubilee  in  1887.  The  celebrations  of  that  year  had 
appealed  powerfully  to  the  popular  imagination.  The 
ageing  queen,  the  grown  ideals,  the  mature  hopes, 
energies,  and  thoughts,  were  all  present  •  in  men's 
minds,  suffused  with  a  glow  of  jubilation,  half  pensive, 
half  congratulatory ;  and  the  outward  rejoicings 
were  scarcely  done  with,  the  beacon  fires  hardly 
extinct,  when  the  twin  poets  who,  with  all  their 
differences,  were  alike  in  fame  and  age,  bade  fare- 
well to  poetry  and  life,  and  declared  their  last  oracles 
to  the  people  whose  progress  they  had  followed  for 
fifty  years.  With  an  interval  of  less  than  three  years, 
each  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  leaving  their 
final  utterances  for  the  consolation  of  their  mourners. 

Here,  however,  all  likeness  ceases,  and  even  these 
are  characteristically  distinct.  Tennyson's  rhythm  in 
'  Crossing  the  Bar '  reproduces  wonderfully  the  move- '  Crossing 
ment  of  the  full,  slow  tide  of  which  it  speaks,  gaj.  > 
Without  '  foam '  and  almost  without  '  sound ',  it 
rises  in  one  swelHng  verse  and  falls  stilly  in  the 
next ;  and,  rising  and  falling  with  the  rhythm,  borne 
tranquilly,   gravely,   almost    passively,   seawards,   the 


282  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

thought,  or  soul,  of    the  poet  moves   on  the    bosom 
of  the  deep  : 

For  tho'  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 

When  I  have  crost  the  bar. 

Upwards    in    five   beats,  downwards    in    three,    with 

Tennyson's   well-known   music   of   monosyllables,   the 

stately  surrender  of  activity  and  its  resumption  in 

eternity  are  accomplished.     There  was  a  speck  in  the 

darkness.     The    darkness    gradually    overwhelms    it. 

The  awful  tide  rolls  on. 

Epilogue'      Browning  dispels  the  awe.     He  asserts  his  individu- 
to  Aso-         .        . 
lando.        ality  till  the  last.    Not  for  him  is  the  passive  surrender 

to  a  force  greater  than  himself.     Not  for  him  the  aids 

to  consolation  derived  from  harmonies  of    sentiment 

and  harmonizing  metaphors  of  language.     The  twilight 

of  day  and  the  twilight  of  life  ;  the  caU  of  death  and  the 

evening  bell ;    the  open  sea  and  time  without  end  ; 

this    subtle    play    upon    emotions — these    associative 

ideas  and  transferences  of  thought — were  foreign  to 

Browning's  art : 

So,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time, 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer ! 
Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
'  Strive  and  thrive  ! '  cry  '  Speed, — fight  on,  fare  ever 
There  as  here  ! ' 

The  difference  is  obvious  and  essential.  The  robust 
activities  of  man — his  bustle,  his  cheering,  his  braced 
courage — are   to   break,   unaffrighted,   the   silence   to 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  283 

which  Tennyson  attuned  his  mood.  The  '  unseen '  is 
not  to  be  explained  away  by  fallacies  from  limited 
horizons.  Force,  however  puny  and  inadequate,  is  to 
be  opposed  to  greater  force,  in  the  confidence  derived 
from  the  experience  of  him  who 

never  doubted  clouds  would  break. 
Never   dreamed,    though   right   were   worsted,    wrong    would 

triumph. 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better. 
Sleep  to  wake. 

Push  this  faith  to  the  uttermost,  cried  Browning. 
Reject  despair,  whatever  its  disguise  :  every  form  of 
relaxed  energy  is  unfaith  : 

What  had  I  on  earth  to  do 
With  the  slothful,  with  the  mawkish,  the  unmanly  ? 
Like  the  aimless,  helpless,  hopeless,  did  I  drivel — 
Being — who  ? 

How  splendid  a  message  of  conscious  being  to  resound, 
as  actually  occurred,  on  the  very  day  of  the  poet's 
death ! 

Nor  was  his  message  confined  to  his  last  day  or  last  Brown- 
poem.  It  is  the  secret  of  Browning's  optimism,  and  message, 
the  clue  to  his  life  and  writings  throughout.  There 
were  two  things  eminent  in  Robert  Browning  :  first, 
his  faith  in  a  reconciling  purpose,  in  a  soul  of  good 
beneath  the  evil,  however  much  the  evil  overlay  it, 
bearing  witness  to  the  origin  of  evil  as  a  test  and  as  a 
condition  of  the  good ;  and,  secondly,  and  depending 
on  the  first,  his  belief  in  energy  and  effort.  True  life — 
not  its  failure  or  its  misses — is  a  struggle  towards  good. 


284     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  survival  of  the  fittest  is  the  survival  of  the  best. 
Evil  is  good's  opportunity.  Sin  is  the  milieu  of  resist- 
ance. The  law  of  nature  is  the  moral  law  as  weU,  since 
both  spring  from  one  source. 

As  resistance  is  the  beginning  of  good,  so  efiort  is 
the  means  to  perfection  through  all  the  stages  of  life. 
Even  sin,  in  this  creed,  is  more  sinful  if  it  be  the  sin  of 
surrender  and  not  that  of  purposeful  action.  Merely 
not-sinning  may  sometimes  be  farther  from  good 
than  sinful  action  itself.  To  '  depart  from  evil  and  do 
good '  was  Browning's  rescript,  as  it  was  the  psalmist's  ; 
but  to  avoid  evil  and  do  nothing  might  be  a  worse  sin 
against  manhood.  Read,  for  instance,  in  Dramatic 
Romances,  Browning's  rendering  of  the  Florentine  fable 
of  The  Statue  and  the  Bust.  Two  lovers,  whose  love 
was  a  crime,  postponed  and  dallied  with  their  desires 
till  time  crept  on  them  unawares.  Youth  and  the 
dream  escaped.  The  faculties  of  feeling  were  dried 
up,  and,  reversing  the  Pygmalion  myth,  cold  stone 
took  the  place  of  warm  humanity.  What  judgment 
does  the  poet  pronounce  ?  They  abstained  from  sin, 
says  the  world  ;  abstention  was  sin,  declares  the  poet : 
'  a  crime  will  do  As  well,  I  reply,  to  serve  for  a  test 
As  a  virtue  golden  through  and  through '.  It  is  the 
action  that  matters ;  the  colour  of  the  act  is  not 
important : 

Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 
For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will ! 
The  counter  our  lovers  staked  was  lost 
As  surely  as  if  it  were  lawful  coin, 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  285 

(they  failed  by  the  supreme  test  of  action,  without 
reference  to  the  stamp  of  the  act)  : 

And  the  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 
Is  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 
Though  the  end  in  sight  was  a  vice,  I  say. 

And  then  Browning  challenges  every  one  of  us  to  reply 

by  the  test  of  contention  : 

You  of  the  virtue  (we  issue  join) 
How  strive  you  ?     De  te  fabuZa  ! 

Right  or  wrong,  this  was  Browning's  creed,  his 
message  to  a  self-conscious  generation.  To  keep 
the  loins  girded  and  the  lamp  alight  was  at  once  his 
precept  and  his  practice.  He  upheld  it  faithfully  for 
fifty  years.  He  never  pretended  that  life  was  easy, 
AHke  in  his  poetry  and  in  his  acts  he  never  shirked 
its  utmost  responsibilities.  And  herein  lies  the  futility 
of  comparing  Browning  with  Tennyson.  They  are 
essentially  incomparable.  There  is  no  common 
standard  of  measure.  The  pale  Arthur  of  the  Idylls, 
the  dim  Avilion  of  his  peace,  are  as  remote  from 
Browning's  dramatic  genius  as  the  finish  of  Tennyson's 
workmanship  was  remote  from  Browning's  uncouth 
style.  Browning  seized  a  mass  of  material,  and, 
hacking  off  fragments  as  he  could,  roughly  shaped  them 
to  his  fancy.  The  material  is  nearly  always  flawless 
marble  ;  the  art  is  very  often  crude  and  sometimes 
even  grotesque.  Only  here  and  there — rarely,  but 
how  gratefully — the  style  is  worthy  of  the  subject. 

What  was  it,  we  may  ask  at  this  point,  which,  in 
Browning's  opinion,  made  eflfort  worth  while  in  a  world 


286     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 
The      beleaguered  by  sin  and  bounded  by  the  unseen  ?     Wby 

power 

of  love,  strive,  or  struggle,  or  contend  ?     Why  do  God's  work 

with    Pippa's    heart :     '  God's    in    His    heaven — All's 

right   with   the   world '  ?     Browning's   answer   is   the 

one  word,  love.     The  Maker,  he  says  in  efiect,  who  has 

decreed  this  test  of  character,  does  not  leave  us  to 

strive  in  vain.    He  gives  us  love  in  life,  and,  through 

love,  justifies  all.    As  early  as  1835,  in  his  noble  poem, 

Paracelsus,    Browning    upheld    this    belief.    Men,    he 

says, 

grow  too  great 
For  narrow  creeds  of  right  and  wrong,  which  fade 
Before  the  unmeasured  thirst  for  good.  .  .  . 
I  learned  my  own  deep  error,  love's  undoing 
Taught  me  the  worth  of  love  in  man's  estate. 
And  what  proportion  love  should  hold  with  power 
In  his  right  constitution ;  love  preceding 
Power,  and  with  much  power,  always  much  more  love. 

It  is  love  which  binds  man  to  woman  ;    love,  which 

binds  man  to  his  fellow-men  ;    love,  which  binds  man 

to  his  Maker,  even  the  vilest  of  creatures  to  the  Creator 

of  evil  and  of  good  ;    it  is  love — constitutional  love — 

which  knits  the  universe  together,  binding  the  Maker 

to  man. 

To  the  strength  and  majesty  of  this  force  Browning 

testified  in  his  life,  as  well   as  in  his  writings.      His 

love  was  true  poetry,  as  his  poetry  was  true  love. 

E.  B.        Robert  Browning's  marriage   (1846)    with    Elizabeth 

wmng-  ga^pyg^^.    (1806-61) — poet   with   poet   and   lover   with 

lover — is  one  of  the  very  few  romances  which  '  romantic  ' 

writers  lived  instead  of  telling.     To  the  pure  flame  of 

this  passion  the  garish  flambeaux  of   Byron's   amours 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  287 

are  as  gaslight  unto  sunlight.  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning  was  not  a  great  poet,  but  she  was  the  ideal 
counterpart  of  a  great  lover.  We  talk  in  these  days  of 
the  relations  of  women  to  men,  the  equality  of  the 
sexes,  and  so  forth,  as  if  the  great  women  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  had  failed  to  vindicate  their  rights. 
If  complete  self-expression  be  the  final  definition  of 
true  liberty,  then  Queen  Victoria  on  the  throne,  and 
Florence  Nightingale  in  the  camp,  and  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning  in  love,  are  surely  types  of  English- 
women who  found  liberty  attainable  through,  not 
despite  of,  their  sex.  And  of  these  three,  the  woman  of 
forty  who  left  her  invalid's  couch  and  her  masterful 
father's  home  to  follow  her  ardent  lover — her  junior 
by  several  years — ,  who  wrote  poetry  by  his  side,  and 
lived  romantic  days  as  his  wife  for  fifteen  years,  and 
bare  him  a  son  of  their  love,  was,  perhaps,  the  most 
womanly  of  all,  alike  in  her  submission  and  in  her 
revolt. 

Literature  owes  her  a  direct  debt  for  Aurora  Leigh 
and  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  but  the  indirect  debt 
is  larger  for  her  influence  on  Robert  Browning's  life 
and  work,  and  for  such  a  poem  as  One  Word  More,  in 
which  he  acknowledges  what  he  owed  : 

God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  His  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with. 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her. 

And  this  love,  which  Browning  celebrated  in  a 
hundred  different  poems,  from  the  tremendous  thanks- 
giving to  his  wife  to  so  slight  a  lyric  as  A  Wonmn's 


288     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Last  Word,  led  to  a  further  constructive  principle. 
When  Pippa  passes  through  Asolo,  singing  her  brave 
refrain,  which  we  quoted  just  above  ;  when  Cleon 
avers,  in  the  poem  of  that  name, 

Life's  inadequate  to  joy, 
As  the  soul  sees  joy,  tempting  life  to  take ; 

when  Bishop  Blougram,  in  his  Apology,  repels  the 
scofEer's  attack  : 

No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 

A  man's  worth  something.     God  stoops  over  his  head, 

Satan  looks  up  beneath  his  feet — both  tug — 

He's  left,  himself,  in  the  middle :  the  soul  wakes 

And  grows, 

the  reader  is  conscious  of  an  appeal — of  an  implied 
assumption  appealing  —  to  a  consciousness  beyond 
experience,  which  is  new  in  poetry,  new  in  art,  newly 
inwrought  by  contemplation  of  the  new  experience 
of  the  age.  There  is  a  conclusion  to  this  hypothesis, 
which  Tennyson,  with  all  his  artistry,  never  succeeded 
in  revealing.  Love,  which  makes  life  worth  while, 
reveals  the  value  of  effort,  and  evaluates  life  afresh. 
The  poet  is  the  interpreter  of  these  new  values.  There 
were  philosophers  enough  at  that  time — they  are  not 
less  many  to-day — to  render  the  material  view  ;  and 
the  more  the  conditions  of  existence  thrust  material 
interests  to  the  front,  the  more  urgent  it  becomes  that 
the  great  thinkers  of  the  age,  its  Wordsworth,  its 
Browning,  its  George  Meredith,  should  be  consulted 
at  all  points,  in   order  to  insure  a  due  performance 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  289 

of  man's  spiritual  functions  in  a  world  which  is  increasing 

its  demands  on  his  merely  physical  activities. 

Read  in  this  light  the  conclusion  to  the  twenty-  The.  Ring 

three  thousand  lines  of  Browning's  masterpiece,  The  ^^^j^.^  ^ 

Ring  and  the  Booh  : 

So,  British  Public,  who  may  like  me  yet, 

(Marry  and  amen  !)  leam  one  lesson  hence 

Of  many  which  whatever  lives  should  teach : 

This  lesson,  that  our  human  speech  is  naught, 

Our  human  testimony  false,  our  fame 

And  human  estimation  words  and  wind. 

Why  take  the  artistic  way  to  prove  so  much  ? 

Because  it  is  the  glory  and  good  of  Art, 

That  Art  remains  the  one  way  possible 

Of  speaking  truth.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Art — wherein  man  nowise  speaks  to  men. 

Only  to  mankind — Art  may  tell  a  truth 

ObUquely,  do  the  thing  shall  breed  the  thought. 

Not  wrong  the  thought,  missing  the  mediate  word. 

So  may  you  paint  your  picture,  twice  show  truth, 

So,  note  by  note,  bring  music  from  your  mind. 

So  write  a  book  shall  mean  beyond  the  facts. 

Suffice  the  eye  and  save  the  soul  beside. 

Read  this  and  ponder  its  significance.  Remember 
that  it  is  imaginatively  conceived  and  literally  meant. 
Remember  the  man  who  wrote  it,  his  fifty  years' 
witness  to  its  truth,  his  love  casting  out  fear,  his  courage 
stronger  than  death.  '  Our  human  speech  ',  faltering, 
imperfect,  and  most  imperfect,  perhaps,  when  its 
forms  are  most  delusively  attractive,  '  is  naught '. 
'  Our  human  testimony ',  the  guesswork  of  induction 
from  phenomena  seen  in  time  and  space,  is  '  false  ', 
and  most  false,  perhaps,  when  most  dogmatic.  '  Our 
human  estimation  '  of  base  and  noble,  great  and  small, 
19 


290     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

is  '  words  and  wind ',  and  most  fleeting,  perhaps,  in 
the  near  perspective  of  contemporaries.  Art  is  the 
one  way  possible  of  speaking  truth.  The  poet  or 
painter,  searching  beyond  experience,  aiming  through 
the  illusion  of  the  senses  at  the  transcendental  point 
of  view,  appealing  from  efEects  to  causes,  from  experi- 
ence to  God,  is  alone  competent  to  speak  truth,  though 
he  come  down  from  the  mountain  with  but  broken 
fragments  of  stone,  their  inscription  hard  to  decipher, 
and  though  the  shining  of  his  face  quickly  fade.  '  So 
write  a  book  shall  mean  beyond  the  facts ' — thus 
reversing  the  bliss  of  man,  according  to  Pope  ^ — , 
this  transcendental  aim,  however  inadequately  realized, 
of  the  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  is,  in  the  last 
resort,  their  knowledge-value.  To  correct  the  con- 
ventions of  human  judgment  by  a  higher  and  a  wiser 
standard  is  the  message  of  the  poets  in  the  forward 
line. 


u. 

The  There  was  one  writer  in  these  years  who  was  seized 

o°George  ^^  ^^7  ^7  *^i^  rapture  that  the  inscription  on  his 

Meredith,  tablets  became  in  places  almost  undecipherable.     We 

rehearse  every  pretext  of  imperfection — derived  from 

the  task  of  reducing  a  hardly  malleable  material  to 

familiar  forms  of  beauty — in   order  to   diminish,   or, 

at  least,   to   extenuate   the   formal  difficulties   which 

confront  us  in  his  works.     An  aphorism  of  the  late 

^ '  Not  to  act  or  think  beyond  mankind  ',  see  p.  63,  swpra. 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  291 

Sir  Leslie  Stephen  (1832-1904),  rational  philosopher, 
and  critic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  serviceable  at 
this  point :  *  The  deepest  thinker ',  he  says,  '  is  not 
really — though  we  often  use  the  phrase — in  advance 
of  his  day  so  much  as  in  the  line  along  which  advance 
takes  place '  {English  Literature  and  Society  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  17).  This  is  true  and  important 
to  criticism,  for  it  helps  to  explain  the  formal  obscurity 
of  writers — and,  incidentally,  their  neglect  in  their  own 
day — who  notch  out  the  rugged  path  ahead,  where 
the  flowers  of  the  new  age  will  blossom.  They  are 
expressing  the  thoughts  of  to-morrow  in  the  language 
— and  to  the  ears — of  to-day.  Consequently,  they 
speak  hard  sayings  to  a  heedless  generation. 

George  Meredith  as  poet,  even  more  than  as  novelist, 
belongs  to  this  class  of  pioneers,  to  the  men  in  the 
Hne  of  advance,  whose  full  greatness  awaits  recognition 
till  the  advance  is  completed  and  the  novelty  has  become 
commonplace  by  repetition.  The  identity  of  Faith 
with  Reason,  the  Real  as  the  basis  of  the  Ideal,  society 
reanimated  by  love  of  Earth,  and  not  shivering  with 
dread  of  the  things  that  are — not  clinging  to  the 
customary  and  the  sentimental — ,  for  these  ideas 
Meredith  strove  in  the  worst  years  of  the  divorce 
between  knowledge  and  belief,  fulfilling  the  vision  of 
Wordsworth  in  the  new  era  of  democracy,  raising  to 
impassioned  contemplation  the  milder  curiosity  of 
Tennyson,  and  surpassing  by  a  deeper  transcenden- 
talism the  human  harmonies  of  Robert  Browning. 

A    poet's    instrument — a    feeble    one — ^is    language, 


292     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and,  as  the  experience  is  more  novel,  and  the  evidence 
more  miexpected,  so  his  instrument  must  prove  less 
adequate  and  manageable.  There  are  even  occasions 
when  the  commonest  words  have  to  be  called  in  and 
re-coined,  in  order  to  remove  their  trite  appearance, 
and  to  repair  their  expressiveness.  The  imperfection  of 
language  as  a  medium  of  truth  is  remedied  in  course 
of  time.  It  repeats,  in  similar  circumstances,  differing 
only  in  degree,  the  history  of  its  original  development. 
All  this  is  familiar  enough,  but,  till  recently,  it  has  not 
been  applied  to  the  criticism  of  Meredith's  poetry  i. 
Thus  applied,  it  explains,  for  example,  his  makeshift 
with  an  adjective  where  no  substantive  exists ;  it 
explains  his  use  of  '  Earth ',  and,  partially,  his  disuse 
of  '  God '  ;  and  it  explains  the  cause,  if  not  altogether 
Hymn  to  the  result,  of  the  obscurity  of  such  poems  as  his  Hymn 
to  Colour.  There  he  is  adapting  an  old  language  to 
the  requirements  of  a  new  philosophy  : 

With  Life  and  Death  I  walked  when  Love  appeared, 
And  made  them  on  each  side  a  shadow  seem.  .  .  . 
Around,  save  for  those  shapes,  with  him  who  led 
And  linked  them,  desert  varied  by  no  sign 
Of  other  Ufe  than  mine. 

Love  takes  the  poet's  hand,  and  Life  and  Death 
sink  away.  '  Whichever  is,  the  other  is ',  says  Love  ; 
Life  and  Death  are  twin  aspects  of  one  whole,  '  but 

1  Several  books  have  appeared  in  the  last  year  or  two.  Especial 
interest  attaches  to  The  Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  Oeorge  Meredith, 
by  George  Macaulay  Trevelyan  (Constable,  1906),  and  to  Aspects 
of  Oeorge  Meredith,  by  Richard  H.  P.  Curie  (Routledge,  1908), 
which  will  be  found  to  supplement  each  other. 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  293 

know,  It  is  thy  craving  self  that  thou  dost  see,  Not  in 

them  seeing  me  ',   not  recognizing  Love  as  stronger 

than  Death  and  Life.     This  thought  of  the  '  craving 

self '    obstructing    the    activity    of    the    spirit,    and, 

therefore,    the    perception    of    truth,    is    essential    to 

Meredith's   message.     We   find   it   everywhere   in   his 

poems  :   '  It  is  our  ravenous  that  quails  '  (the  adjective 

for  the  substantive,  as  above),   '  Flesh  by  its  craven 

thirsts    and    fears    distraught ',    is    an    example    from 

Meditation  under  Stars.     '  Love  meet  they  who  do  not 

shove  Cravings  in  the  van  of  Love  '  is  another,  from 

The  Woods  of  Westermain. 

Then  Love,  in  this  hymn,  introduces  the  difficult 

analogy    between    Colour,    as    the    mediator    between 

Light  and  Dark,  and  Love,  as  the  mediator  between 

Life  and  Death.     Recollect  that  the  whole  argument 

is  new  ;    the  whole  field  of  speculation  is  unexplored. 

Poetry  has  never  yet  attempted,  at  any  rate  in  the 

same  degree,  to  '  see,  hear,  feel,  outside  the  senses  ', 

as  Meredith  writes  elsewhere,  and  to  penetrate  Earth's 

appearances,  beyond  even  the  links  of  her  phenomena, 

to  Earth's  ultimate,  secret  relationships,  and  to  the 

very  psychology  of  her  physics. 

Look  now  where  Colour,  the  soul's  bridegroom,  makes 
The  house  of  heaven  splendid  for  the  bride. 

The  physical  process  of  dawn — colour  irradiating  the 
firmament — is  extended,  allegorically,  or  by  analogy, 
to  the  psychical  process  of  truth — love  irradiating  the 

He  gives  her  homeliness  in  desert  air, 
And  sovereignty  in  spaciousness ;  he  leads 


294     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Through  widening  chambers  of  surprise  to  where 
Throbs  rapture  near  an  end  that  aye  recedes, 
Because  his  touch  is  infinite  and  lends 
A  yonder  to  all  ends  .  .  . 

He  is  the  heart  of  light,  the  wing  of  shades. 
The  noon  of  beauty :  never  soul  embraced 
Of  him  can  harbour  unfaith ;  soul  of  him 
Possessed  walks  never  dim. 

And  as  Colour  brings  beauty  out  of  darkness,  and 
quickens  death  into  life,  so  by  Love 

.  .  .  have  men  come  out  of  brutishness. 
To  spell  the  letters  of  the  sky,  and  read 
A  reflex  upon  Earth  else  meaningless. 

Then  the  song  ceases,  and  the  shadows  reappear,  but 
the  poet  sees  them  with  different  eyes  : 

Life  ere  long 
Came  on  me  in  the  pubUc  ways  and  bent 
Eyes  deeper  than  of  old :  Death  met  I  too, 
And  saw  the  dawn  glow  through. 

This  is  a  genuine  re-interpretation  of  experience,  and 
it  matters  not  at  all  if  the  subject  prove  at  times  too 
hard  for  the  manipulation  of  language.  Meredith  sins 
by  excess,  not  defect.  Unlike  Tennyson's  child,  who 
had  '  no  language  but  a  cry ',  the  imperious  need  of 
his  imagination  creates  the  utterance  of  the  lips. 
Meredith  breaks  through  the  thicket  of  words,  using 
images  as  lanterns  and  shaping  swords  to  pruning- 
hooks,  till  those  that  win  with  him  to  the  other  side, 
panting  and  a  little  breathless,  forget  which  was 
lantern  or  sword,  which  was  image  or  metaphor,  and 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  295 

even  what  use  either  served,  in  the  glad  greeting  of  a 

goal  to  which  none  other  could  have  led  them. 

Above  all,  do  not  drift  on  sensation,  is  the  key  to  Meredith's 

.  .  ,  message, 

Meredith's  creed.  Look  with  spirit  past  the  sense, 
Spirit  shines  in  permanence ',  he  warns  us  in  The  Woods 
of  Westermain.  '  Behold  the  life  at  ease  ;  it  drifts. 
The  sharpened  life  commands  its  course  ',  we  are  re- 
minded in  Hard  Weather.  Again  and  again  it  occurs, 
up  and  down  the  pages  of  his  poems,  and  especially 
in  '  A  Reading  of  Earth  ' — this  sweet,  stern  call  to 
mere,  dear  duty.  There  is  no  mysticism  in  the  message, 
though  there  is  still  a  mystery  ;  but  it  brings  to  fuller 
completeness — it  advances  another  step,  historically — 
the  psychological  structure  of  Wordsworth's  emotional 
faith  in  the  common  direction  of  all  nature,  conscious, 
sentient,  and  inanimate  alike.  It  expresses,  in  however 
hard  verse,  the  rational  sanction  of  faith,  the  psycho- 
logical basis  of  moral  action.  The  appeal  to  theological 
sentiment,  which  Tennyson  affected  from  his  earliest 
to  his  latest  verse,  is  not  in  Meredith's  range.  Like 
Wordsworth  before  him,  in  the  fine  phrase  of  the  late 
F.  W.  H.  Myers,  Meredith  turns  a  theology  back  into 
religion.  His  May-Queen,  we  feel  (for  she  might  surely 
have  qualified),  would  have  died  less  theologically, 
though  not,  therefore,  less  religiously,  than  Tennyson's. 
Her  portrait  is  drawn  in  the  most  musical,  as  it  was 
also  the  earliest,  of  Meredith's  poems,  the  Love  in  the 
Valley  of  1850  1. 

^  The  metre  of  Love  in  the  Valley  is  the  same  as  that  of  George 
Darley's  Serenade  of  a  Royal  Martyr.     It  has  also  been  remarked 


296     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ReooncUe-  It  is  for  his  supreme  reconcilement  of  '  the  external 
world  '  with  '  the  individual  mind '  in  Wordsworth's 
programme,  of  the  '  outer  '  with  the  '  inner  '  in  his  own, 
that  George  Meredith  is  accounted  among  the  greatest 
English  poets.  He  offers  the  revelation  sought  in  the 
morning  of  the  century,  and  he  rests  it  on  no  divorce 
between  human  knowledge  and  heavenly  wisdom,  on 
no  antagonism  of  reason  and  faith,  no  compromise 
disguised  by  association,  but  on  a  real  union  of  the  two. 
Imagination  coalesces  with  reason.  It  is  the  poet's 
pathway  to  reality.  Its  truths  are  as  vital  and  as  valid 
as  those  of  science  itself.  Living  thought  will  not 
acquiesce  for  more  than  a  period  of  transition  in  any 
more  diffident  conclusion.  A  permanent  reconciliation 
is  required,  an  enduring  and  a  transcending  identification. 
These  we  find,  obscurely  though  it  be,  in  Meredith's 
A  Thrush  in  February,  in  The  Woods  of  Westermain, 
in  Woodland  Peace,  in  A  Faith  on  Trial,  in  The  Lark 
Ascending,  and  in  twenty  other  poems,  from  which  we 
may  cite  the  conclusion  to  Meditation  under  Stars, 
where  Earth  is  transformed  in  the  eyes  of  her 
lover : 

Then  at  new  flood  of  customary  morn, 

Look  at  her  through  her  showers, 

Her  mists,  her  streaming  gold: 
A  wonder  edges  the  familiar  face ; 
She  wears  no  more  that  robe  of  printed  hours ; 
Half  strange  seems  Earth,  and  sweeter  than  her  flowers. 


that,  in  Darley's  Beckd,  the  phrase  '  such  a  leg  !  '  occurs  in  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  Chancellor  by  the  ladies  of  the  Court.  If  Meredith 
owed  this  to  Darloy,  he  turned  it  to  excellent  account  in  The  Egoist. 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  297 

Finally,  in  Meredith,  the  poet,  there  is  an  impassioned 
tenderness  that  attracts  us.  It  is  never  wistful,  never 
morbid,  never  indulgent.  The  poet's  attitude  is  that 
of  faith,  infinitely  charitable  to  ignorance.  Meredith 
says  in  efiect :  The  power  of  happiness  is  within  you  ; 
this  earth,  which  seems  so  cruel,  which  takes  such 
delight  in  slaughter,  is  the  earth  which  speeds  the  race, 
which  brings  man  from  dust  to  flame,  and  which  love 
illuminates  with  colour.  Love  Earth,  and  her  secret 
is  ours.  '  Earth  loves  her  young '  ;  'in  her  charge 
is  our  fate  '  ;  '  the  road  to  her  soul  is  the  Real '.  '  Once 
beheld,  she  gives  the  key  airing  every  doorway  '.  There 
is  spirit  in  her  clods,  '  footway  to  the  God  of  Gods '. 
But  have  care,  adds  the  poet,  pitying  even  as  he  warns, 
and  yearning  to  help  us  ;  'in  yourself  may  lurk  the 
trap  '.  Fof  to  Meredith,  as  to  Wordsworth  in  A  Poet's 
Epitaph — but  more  conspicuously  because  with  more 
knowledge — ,  fear,  and  selfishness,  and  greed,  and 
knowledge  as  an  end  in  itself,  and  hollow  professions 
of  piety,  and  hate,  and  all  the  fry  of  darkness,  are  the 
obstacles  which  we  raise  against  happiness.  It  is  so 
simple,  he  says,  and  yet  so  difficult ;  we  cling  to  custom, 
as  to  the  old  coat  in  Carlyle's  philosophy  of  clothes. 
But  '  Enter  these  enchanted  woods,  you  who  dare '. 
Nay,  you  who  care,  even  more  than  you  who  dare,  for 
it  is  our  blindness,  our  folly,  and  our  pretence  against 
which  Meredith  prays.  All  his  poetry  is  a  prayer  of 
thanksgiving  for  light  manifest  and  truth  fuU-grown. 

There  are  those  who  prefer  the  novelist  to  the  poet. 
There  are  those  who,  choosing  among  his  poems,  prefer 


298     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Love  in  the  Valley,  with  its  music  of  youth,  and  Modern 
Love,  with  its  tragedy  of  wedlock,  to  the  impersonal 
and  philosophic  Earth-poetry.  The  choice  is  there,  and 
the  preference  is  immaterial.  But  to  some,  the  poetry 
of  the  romantic  movement  seems  to  have  felt  its  way 
through  all  the  magic  of  Meredith's  predecessors  to 
that  final  utterance  of  romance  realized,  in  the  wonder 
edging  the  familiar.  For,  after  all,  true  poetry,  at 
bottom,  is  a  consecration  of  the  commonplace  : 

Mine  are  these  new  fruitings  rich 
The  simple  to  the  common  brings. 


m. 

Summary.  Since  the  first  notes  of  Thomson  and  Gray,  in  the 
dawn  of  the  new  romance,  we  have  marked  the  gradual 
opening  of  sealed  fountains  and  barred  windows.  The 
sober  proprieties  are  overrun.  The  region  of  pure 
imagination  is  desolate  and  comfortless  no  more.  The 
forest  of  Arden  is  re-tenanted.  Ships  sail  across  the 
sea  of  fancy  to  people  the  deserts  of  Bohemia.  The 
unfinished  work  of  Wordsworth  finds  its  complement 
and  continuation.  The  '  walls  of  cities  '  which  Words- 
worth left  standing  with  all  their  sorrow  '  evermore 
within '  are  levelled  at  a  more  powerful  trumpet-call. 
Less  and  less  is  excluded  from  the  poet's  survey,  and 
this  summons  to  the  acceptance  of  a  common  fate,  seen 
steadily  and  whole,  is  a  sign  of  the  poet's  growing  power 
to  interpret  and  to  reconcile  appearances. 


IMAGINATIVE  REASON  299 

Those  who  tried,  in  accents  however  faltering,  to 
recover  the  whole  truth  of  life  from  the  hands  of  the 
commissioners  who  were  parcelling  it  out  into  religious 
and  scientific  partial  truths  ;  those  who,  within  the 
limits  of  their  powers,  but  not  below  the  dignity  of 
their  resolve,  sought  the  evidence  of  reality  as  the  sole 
basis  of  an  inference  to  the  ideal ;  who,  not  content 
with  ad  interim  conclusions,  attempted,  in  the  fine 
phrase  of  Keats,  to  '  pour  out  a  balm  upon  the  world  '  ; 
who  fused  the  particular  in  the  universal,  and  rendered 
the  spectacle,  transformed,  in  the  eternal  terms  of 
art ;  who  aimed  at  the  transcendental  synthesis, 
despite  all  allurements  by  the  way — allurements  of 
subject  and  style  in  byways  of  speculation  or  decora- 
tion—  ;  these  are  they  who  revolved  concentrically 
with  the  revolution  of  their  times,  and  made  the  needs 
of  their  times  the  centre  of  their  strivings  and  their 
aims,  Tennyson  tried  it ;  Browning  tried  it ;  Mere- 
dith tried  it ;  none  completely,  for  the  solution  is  not 
yet ;  Tennyson,  with  many  barkings  back,  with  much 
timidity  and  dependence  on  transition,  skilfully  dis- 
guised as  '  honest  doubt ' ,  with  much  tugging  from 
the  realm  of  pure  beauty  to  which  Keats  had  first 
repaired,  and  with  much  conscientious  endeavour  to 
beautify  the  forms  of  thought ;  Browning,  with  un- 
conquered  hope — not  yet,  and,  haply,  never,  to  be 
disproved — that  the  soul  of  man,  dissected,  contains 
the  principle  of  good  ;  Meredith,  with  intense  con- 
viction that  '  blood  and  brain  and  spirit '  are  the 
triune  parts  of  Earth,  in  the  harmonious  working  of 


300     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

which  is  the  key  to  unlock  all  mysteries — ,  and  all 
three  poets  with  absolute  sincerity. 

They  achieved,  through  this,  more  than  this.  Lyrical 
poetry  attained  in  their  hands  a  power  and  a  range  of 
expression  which  it  had  never  reached  before.  In  our 
desire  to  display  their  concentric  purpose,  their  response 
to  the  questioning  of  their  age — a  response  truer  than 
the  philosophers'  and  deeper  than  the  novelists' — , 
it  may  well  be  that  we  have  failed  to  praise  their  beauties 
enough  ;  that  '  the  chirp  of  Ariel '  has  escaped  between 
the  lines  of  '  the  reading  of  Earth  '.  If  so,  the  remedy 
is  at  hand  :  there  are  the  open  pages  of  their  poems  ; 
and,  perhaps,  appreciation  will  be  quickened  through 
insight  into  the  historical  view.  Poetry,  like  heaven, 
has  many  mansions,  and  a  comparison  by  degrees 
of  greatness  would  be  invidious,  nor,  indeed,  could  it 
be  sustained. 


§  5.  PRE-KAPHAELITISM. 

THE  world  beautiful  was  to  be  less  remotely  wooed. 
A  group  of  young  writers  and  painters  recall  at 
the  noon  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  pleasant 
Bohemian  tradition  set  in  an  earlier  generation  by 
the  Wordsworths,  the  Coleridges  and  the  Lambs,  and 
renewed  about  1875  by  the  Barbizon  group  which 
included  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson,  the  art-critic  and  painter, 
and  his  cousin,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

They  were  all  about  the  same  age  :  D.  G.  Rossetti ;  a  group 
his  (surviving)  brother,  William  Michael,  and  their  ^g^j^'j^g 
sister  Christina ;  John  Everett  Millais,  Thomas 
Woolner,  Holman  Hunt,  James  Collinson  and  George 
Meredith.  With  sundry  comings  and  goings,  which 
it  would  be  tiresome  to  follow  in  detail,  now  in  Blooms- 
bury  and  now  in  Chelsea,  this  eager  band  of  youth 
kept  house  and  counsel  together,  reading,  writing, 
drawing,  and  inspiring  one  another.  Ford  Madox 
Brown  (1821-93)  was  one  of  the  cdterie,  though  not  in 
it ;  John  Ruskin  (1819-1900),  Rossetti's  senior  by 
nine  years,  stooped  at  intervals  from  Olympus  to  offer 
help  and  advice,  with  a  certain  kindly  condescension  ; 
William  Morris  (1834-96)  was  a  junior  recruit,  who 
brought  funds  as  well  as  talents  to  the  fellowship  ; 


302     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  and  Theodore  Watts 
(-Dunton),  both  a  little  younger  yet,  preserved  till 
the  last  at  Putney  the  practice  of  a  house  in  common ; 
and  to  this  list,  incomplete  as  it  is,  should  be  added 
the  name  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  who,  in  Rossetti's  decline, 
proved  a  valuable  friend. 

We  are  only  incidentally  concerned  with  the  work  of 
the  painters  in  this  group.  Millais  lived  to  be  a  baronet 
and  president  of  the  Royal  Academy  ;  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt,  O.M.,  is  still  alive,  and  shares  with  Mr.  W.  M. 
Rossetti  the  role  of  historiographer  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites.  Many  of  the  best  pictures  of  the  artists 
are  now  hung  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  and  not  a  few  possess 
a  literary  interest,  independently  of  the  principles 
then  common  to  literature  and  art.  Thus,  Millais's 
*  Ophelia  '  (1852)  preserves  the  lineaments  of  Elizabeth 
Siddal,  afterwards  Rossetti's  wife  ;  his  '  North-West 
'Passage '  (1874)  had  as  model  for  its  sea-captain 
Trelawny,  Byron's  friend.  There,  too,  are  Rossetti's 
portrait  of  Mrs.  William  Morris,  his  '  Beata  Beatrix ' 
(1863),  painted  in  memory  of  his  wife,  and  his  '  Ecce 
Ancilla  Domini '  (1850),  with  the  heads  of  Christina 
Rossetti  and  of  Woolner,  the  sculptor.  There,  too, 
is  a  canvas  by  Sir  Edward  Burne-Jones,  who  was 
associated  with  Rossetti  and  Morris  in  a  scheme  for 
decorating  the  walls  of  the  Union  Society  at  Oxford, — 
one  example  among  several  (though  its  remains  have 
perished)  of  the  communion  between  the  painters  and 
the  poets. 

From   this   ardent   group   of  younger   men   Alfred 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM  303 

Tennyson  and  the  Brownings  were  necessarily  aloof. 
These  were  senior  by,  roughly,  twenty  years.  But 
Robert  Browning's  influence  on  the  forms  of  Rossetti's 
poems  can  be  traced  in  several  places,  and  when 
Tennyson,  in  1832,  issued  The  Lady  of  ShaloU  (among 
his  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical),  he  became,  unwittingly,  a 
leader  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood,  which  was  Pre- 
formally  constituted  from  this  circle.  For  that  poem,  itism. 
above  all  others  in  the  volume,  except,  perhaps, 
Mariana  in  the  South,  displayed  the  gifts  of  colour  and 
of  draughtsmanship  which  marked  the  writings  of 
the  school.  Moreover,  it  anticipated  other  qualities  : 
It  was  founded  on  an  Italian  story.  It  repaired  to 
Astolat  and  Camelot,  and  the  wonderland  of  the 
Arthur-legend.  It  revived  the  device  of  a  refrain.  It 
was  direct  and  detailed  in  its  particularization.  It  had 
recourse  to  a  certain  preciosity  of  archaic  convention, 
and  it  admitted  the  full  effect,  at  once  voluptu- 
ous and  simple,  of  a  soft  and  liquid  vocabulary 
('  lilies  ',  '  willows  ',  '  carols  ',  '  shallops  ',  and  so 
forth). 

The  idea  governing  this  poem  was,  so  to  speak, 
atavistic.  It  derived,  through  Keats,  from  Spenser, 
and,  through  Spenser,  from  Dante  and  his  circle, 
whence  came  Rossetti's  fore-name,  the  subjects  of 
several  of  his  pictures,  and  his  edition  of  the  early 
Italian  poets.  Keats  himself  had  abandoned  this 
motive  when  the  spirit  of  Milton  swept  the  strings 
which  he  tuned  to  the  vision  of  Hyperion,  and  Tennyson 
was  likewise  to  abandon  it  for  Miltonic  cadences  of 


304  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

blank  verse,  and  for  the  problems  of  post-mediseval 
philosopby  to  which  the  death  of  Hallam  turned  his 
mind.     But  there,  in  The  Lady  of  Shalott,  is  the  true 
Pre-Raphaelite  idea,  embroidered  with  complete  success 
through  the  winding  beauty  of  its  stanzas.     There  is 
the  verse  which  is  pictorial,  and  there  are  the  pictures 
made  poetic,  with  that  special  fusion  of  the  arts  peculiar 
to  the  genius  of  men,  who,  like  Ruskin,  Rossetti  and 
William  Morris   (and  Millais,   who   wrote  poetry  for 
The  Germ),  were  painters  and  designers  as  well  as 
critics  and  poets.     There,  too,  ideally,  as  formally,  is 
the  retirement  from  action  to  sensation,  and  from  the 
contemplative  to  the  sensuous  state  of  being  ;    above 
all,  from  to-day  to  yesterday.     Tennyson,  as  we  have 
seen,  lived  to  modernize  Malory  and  to  try  to  spiritualize 
evolutionist  science.     Millais,  too,  had  a  second  period. 
Meredith,  like  Madox  Brown,  had  no  liking  for  coteries, 
though  there  are  traces  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  motive  in 
one  or  two  of  his  poems,   especially  in  the  sonnet- 
sequence  Modern  Love,   the  affinities  of  which  with 
Rossetti's  House  of  Life  it  would  be  an  interesting 
special  study  to  follow  out.     Ruskin  and  Morris,  as 
we  shall  see,  became  chiefly  concerned  with  the  world 
of  to-morrow,  and  Rossetti,  alone  in  poetry,  preserved 
the  Pre-Raphaelite  idea  throughout  his  life. 

The  origin  of  the  brotherhood  has  been  fixed  with 
comparative  certainty.  In  a  letter  written  by  Keats  to 
his  brother  and  sister,  and  included  in  the  Life  by  Lord 
Houghton,  which  Rossetti  was  reading  in  1848,  the 
following  remark  occurs  :  '  When  I  was  last  at  Haydon's 


PRE-RAPHAELItiSM  305 

I  looked  over  a  book  of  prints,  taken  from  the  fresco  of 
the  church  at  Milan,  the  name  of  which  I  forget.  In 
it  were  comprised  specimens  of  the  first  and  second  age 
of  Art  in  Italy.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  had  a  greater  treat 
out  of  Shakespeare  ;  full  of  romance  and  of  the  most 
tender  feeling  ;  magnificence  of  drapery  beyond  every- 
thing I  ever  saw,  not  excepting  RaphaeVs, — but  grotesque 
to  a  curious  pitch '.  In  this  enthusiasm  for  the  work 
of  Italian  painters  before  Raphael — Rossetti  refers  to  the 
passage  in  a  letter  to  his  brother — doubtless  we  have  the 
source  of  the  name  and  notions  of  the  '  P.R.B.',  as  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood  came  to  be  known  to  the 
esoterics.  There  are  those  who  will  point  to  the  same 
extract  for  the  source  of  its  decline  ;  who  will  trace  it  to 
an  excess  of  '  tender  feeling '  and  to  a  too  '  curious  pitch ' 
of  grotesqueness.  And  the  criticism  would  be  justified 
from  its  records.  But  the  high  enthusiasm  at  the  begin- 
ning is  at  once  more  inspiring  and  more  important  than 
the  causes  of  decline.  Like  Tennyson's  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table,  the  Pre-Raphaelites  were  banded  to  oppose 
unworthy  standards  of  taste  in  art,  letters  and  conduct. 
They  aimed  at  a  revival  of  chivalry,  as  rendered  by  Scott, 
and  of  its  symbols,  as  rendered  by  the  painters.  They 
believed  in  purity  sans  phrases,  in  a  non-periphrastic 
ingenuousness,  up  to  the  level  of  which  they  wrote,  and 
painted,  and  lived.  And  if  their  ideal  bred  its  own  con- 
ventions— as  Rossetti's  natural  taste  for  old  china  fostered 
in  lesser  men  an  acquisitiveness  for  bric-a-brac — ;  if  some 
of  the  knights  proved  false  and  others  fickle  to  their 

vows  ;  if  some  turned  away  to  other  gods,  '  lest  one  good 
20 


3o6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

custom  should  corrupt  the  world  ',  the  point  is  to  define 
the  custom  at  the  height  of  its  good  intent. 
Dante        This  was  reached  in  1848,  when  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti 

Gabriel 

Rossetti  became  literary  secretary  of  the  Brotherhood,  and  when 

^1828— 

1882).  ^^®  significant  letters,  '  P.R.B.',  were  first  affixed  to  its 
members'  pictures  in  the  Royal  Academy.  It  had  an 
organ  of  its  own,  not  very  happily  called  The  Germ,  as 
brilliant  (and  now  as  precious)  as  it  was  short-lived,  and 
its  members — especially  the  artists — were  severely  dealt 
with  by  the  critics  as  soon  as  their  audacity  was  recog- 
nized. But  the  leading  spirit  in  the  movement — and 
the  literature  written  around  it  is  vaster  than  the  litera- 
ture which  represents  it — was  D,  G.  Rossetti  himself. 
He  was  at  this  time  twenty  years  of  age  in  a  group  of 
talent  in  its  twenties,  and  fate  could  hardly  have  selected 
a  more  appropriate  character  for  a  more  enviable  part. 
He  was  already  the  author  of  The  Blessed  Damozel,  and 
had  drafted  first  versions  of  other  poems,  including  that 
marvellous  piece  of  angels'  wings  bedraggled — soiled 
etherealism — Jenny.  He  was  handsome,  happy  and 
careless — secure,  in  its  proper  connotation —  ;  a  man, 
as  all  accounts  agree,  of  exceptional  charm  and 
vigour ;  the  kind  of  man — ^rare,  but  irresistible — who 
communicates  an  enthusiasm  for  high  objects.  His 
influence  on  the  companionship  was  remarkable,  and 
it  is  only  to  be  explained  by  the  candour  of  his  motives 
and  the  strength  of  his  resolves.  Men  talked  of  it  as  of 
a  spell,  and,  one  after  another,  they  succumbed  to  it, 
listening  to  Rossetti's  conversation,  painting  pictures 
or  writing  poems  under  his  guidance,  slaying  the  dragons 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM  307 

of  indifference  and  compromise,  and  learning  that  the 
will  to  do  is  the  deed.  The  dark  days  came  with  heavy 
wings,  and  Rossetti  was  wrapped  in  the  shadows  ;  but 
the  radiance  of  the  early  years  remains — the  radiant 
memory  of  genius  sunning  itself  without  jealousy  in  the 
applause  and  emulation  of  its  disciples. 

In  however  brief  a  record  of  Rossetti,  there  are  always 
three  factors  to  remember  :  the  un-English  strain  in 
his  blood,  his  pure  and  shining  youth,  and  the  shipwreck 
of  his  love -marriage.  We  may  take  them  in  the  inverse 
order.  Rossetti  became  engaged  in  1851  to  a  girl  of 
seventeen  years  of  age,  named  Elizabeth  Eleanor  Siddal. 
Her  fortune  was  her  eyes  and  hair  ;  her  father  had  been 
a  tradesman  in  Sheffield,  and  she  was  a  sempstress  in 
London.  She  sat  as  an  artists'  model,  and  Rossetti 
first  met  her  in  a  studio.  She  was  painted  byMillais 
and  Holman  Hunt,  and  times  without  number  by  her 
lover.  She  possessed  artistic  skill,  and  a  truly  artistic 
temperament  upon  which  her  physical  weakness  was 
allowed,  unfortunately,  to  react.  Consumption  began 
to  display  itself,  and  the  restraints  of  her  dragging 
engagement — Rossetti  could  not  afford  to  marry — and 
of  her  unexpressed  talents  told,  inevitably,  on  her 
health.  The  marriage  took  place  in  1860,  and  was 
ended  in  1862  by  Mrs.  Rossetti's  accidental  death  from 
an  overdose  of  laudanum. 

The  fact  itself  was  sad  enough  ;  its  circumstances 
made  Rossetti  sadder.  There  had  always  been  financial 
stress,  and  the  young  wife's  illness  to  increase  it. 
A   still-born  baby  had  come   and  gone,  leaving  Mrs. 


3o8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Rossetti  weaker  and  more  depressed.  And,  as  the  wife 
relaxed  her  hold  on  life,  the  husband  grasped  it  more 
firmly.  This  is  the  physical  fact,  with  its  helpless 
psychological  consequences.  Rossetti  grew  stronger 
in  art,  more  impatient  of  lets  and  hindrances,  more 
virile,  more  expressive,  more  sensuous,  as  the  pale  flower 
which  he  had  plucked  from  a  hardly  compatible  soil 
was  turning,  slowly  but  surely,  away  from  the  sun- 
shine to  the  shadows.  What  followed  is  a  matter  of 
history.  Rossetti,  sensitive  and  passionate,  was  over- 
come with  remorse,  and  he  indulged  it  with  characteristic 
thoroughness.  In  the  coffin  of  his  wife  he  laid  the 
manuscript  of  poems  which  he  had  written,  as  he 
felt,  when  he  might  have  been  lightening  her  burden. 
It  was  an  act  so  splendidly  useless  as  almost  to  fail 
in  human  beauty,  and  the  failure  was  completed  by 
the  sequel,  when,  in  1869,  Rossetti  slew  his  own  idea 
and  claimed  back  his  dead  from  the  grave.  The  sacri- 
ficial poems  were  recovered  and  published,  and  Rossetti's 
fame  as  a  poet  was  increased.  But  henceforward 
the  poet  and  the  man  became  as  different  beings. 
He  was  subject  to  a  painful  insomnia,  which  only 
chloral  could  relieve.  The  relief  was  paid  for  by 
other  ailments,  which  attacked  him  in  his  working 
hours.  He  was  haunted  by  morbid  delusions,  and, 
in  varying  degrees,  by  all  the  horrors  known  as  hallu- 
cination. His  friends  did  all  that  was  possible  to  help 
him,  but  his  disease  was  at  times  so  severe  that  he 
suspected  the  birds  in  the  garden  of  complicity  in  a 
plot  to  insult  him  and  to  drive  him  out  of  society. 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM  309 

Rossetti's  illness  hardly  impaired  his  work,  though 
the  contrast  between  his  bright  and  ardent  youth  in 
the  ten  years  after  the  '  P.R.B.',  and  his  sick  and 
fanciful  middle  age  till  he  died,  an  old  man,  at  fifty- 
three,  is  tragic  enough,  and  has  kept  us  too  long  from 
his  poems.  But  one  more  incident  in  his  biography 
is  essential.  The  publication  in  1871  of  a  paper, 
expanded  to  a  pamphlet,  on  The  Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry,  which  took  Rossetti  as  its  type,  is  admitted 
to  have  hastened  his  decline.  The  writer  was  Robert 
Buchanan  (1841-1901),  a  Scottish  novelist  and  poet, 
though  he  wrote  it  under  the  pen-name  of  Thomas 
Maitland.  He  professed,  with  a  certain  plausibility, 
to  represent  the  interests  of  public  morals,  but  the 
bitterness,  the  partiality,  and  the  venom  of  the 
pamphlet  deprived  it  of  real  critical  value,  and  fostered 
Rossetti's  delusion  as  to  a  conspiracy  against  him. 
The  so-called  '  fleshly  '  element  in  Rossetti's  poems — 
the  decadent  note  in  Pre-Raphaelitism — is  untenable 
as  a  personal  proposition  (in  which  sense  Buchanan 
advanced  it),  though  it  has  some  critical  foundation, 
if  '  sensuous '  be  read  for  '  fleshly.'  The  British 
'  Philistine '  standard,  on  which  Matthew  Arnold 
poured  scorn — the  '  Wragg  is  in  custody '  point  of 
view — ,  was  of  all  attitudes  most  foreign  to  Rossetti's 
foreign  blood.  His  Jenny  is  '  Wragg  '  de-Philistinized, 
— Wragg  hellenized,  to  keep  to  Arnold's  language, 
which,  by  constant  iteration,  he  made  sufficiently 
intelligible ;  and  the  Southern  strain  in  Rossetti's 
blood  was,  doubtless,  a  determining  cause  in  his  rejection 


310     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  the  conventions  of  British  thought.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  saymore  on  this  topic,  which  has  little  actuality  to-day, 
Imagina-  The  merits  of  the  poems  themselves  will,  perhaps, 
realism,  li^ive  been  gathered  from  these  indications  of  design. 
Beauty,  obviously,  they  will  possess,  a  beauty,  at  first, 
of  perception,  and,  secondly,  of  recollection.  As  the 
glow  of  enthusiasm  faded,  imperceptibly  but  surely, 
under  trouble,  grief  and  disease,  so  the  poet's  early 
delight  in  beautiful  things  for  the  sake  of  handling 
and  describing  them  gave  place  to  his  so-called  second 
manner  (not  always  or  everywhere  distinguishable)  of 
the  connoisseur,  or  collector,  rather  than  of  the  lover. 
The  difference  brought  with  it,  in  style,  a  more  gorgeous 
and  ornate  vocabulary,  and  more  deliberate  effects 
of  art ;  and  the  corresponding  loss  of  simplicity  was 
redeemed  by  a  gain  in  technique.  Handling,  as  suggested 
just  now,  was  essential  to  Rossetti's  manner.  Symbols 
of  resistance  and  touch  became  concrete  in  his  hands. 
Wings,  and  aureoles,  and  chalices,  and  other  inventions 
of  poets'  imagination,  to  convey  the  impressions  of  a 
sense  beyond  the  ordinary  senses,  were  indued  with 
tangible  forms  by  Rossetti's  brush  or  pen.  His  vivid 
decorative  instinct  required  the  visible  shapes  of 
imagined  emblems  of  beauty,  and  his  poems,  early 
and  late,  are  full  of  such  substantiated  images,  trans- 
ferred sometimes  from  the  canvases  of  the  Itahan 
masters  whom  he  loved.  '  She  had  three  lilies  in  her 
hand,  And  the  stars  in  her  hair  were  seven  '  ;  'As 
low  as  where  this  earth  Spins  like  a  fretful  midge '  ; 
'  And  the  souls  mounting  up  to  God  Went  by  her  like 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM  311 

thin  flames  '  ;  '  The  curled  moon  Was  like  a  little 
feather  Fluttering  far  down  the  gulf  ',  are  clear  instances 
of  this  imaginative  realism  selected  from  The  Blessed 
Damozel,  in  the  last  stanza  of  which  the  two  sentences 
in  brackets — '  (I  saw  her  smile) '  and  '  (I  heard  her 
tears) ' — likewise  point  to  the  same  vivid  symbolism. 

Take,  as  a  further  instance,  the  characteristic  song 
'  Love-Lily '  from  The  House  of  Life.  The  title  itself 
is  a  picture-symbol — the  spirit  of  abstract  love  half- 
imagined  in  lily-like  humanity.  (To  this  Southern 
passion  for  form  should,  doubtless,  be  referred  the 
Northerner's  coarse  charge  of  fleshliness.)  Love-Lily 
has  hands,  brows  and  lips.  Between  them  the  '  spirit 
is  born '  whose  birth  fires  the  poet's  blood,  and  unlocks 
his  physical  senses  : 

Who  on  my  mouth  his  finger  lays, 

And  shows,  while  listening  lutes  confer, 

That  Eden  of  Love's  watered  ways 
Whose  winds  and  spirits  worship  her. 

The  symbolism  is  still  as  innocent  as  that  of  the 
writer  in  the  Old  Testament  who  conceived  the  grandly 
simple  image  about  the  face  and  hinder-parts  of  the 
Deity,  and  the  tangible  appeal  is  assisted  by  the  lutes 
visualized  from  the  unseen.  Then  in  the  last  stanza 
of  the  song,  the  man,  who  is  body  and  soul  combined 
to  pure  harmony  of  function,  is  permitted  access  to 
this  abstract-concrete,  this  tangible-symbolic  Love- 
Lily.  Flesh  has  qualified  for  this  happiness  by  its 
power  to  perceive  spirit : 

Brows,  hands,  and  lips,  heart,  mind,  and  voice, 
Kisses  and  words  of  Love-Lily, — 


312     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

(all  the  parts  imagined  from  abstract  being) — 

Oh  !  bid  me  with  your  joy  rejoice 

Till  riotous  longing  rest  in  me  ! 
Ah  !  let  not  hope  be  still  distraught, 

But  find  in  her  its  gracious  goal, 
Whose  speech  Truth  knows  not  from  her  thought. 

Nor  Love  her  body  from  her  soul. 

Speech  and  thought,  in  the  ideal  realized,  are  to  be 
indistinguishably  true,  and  body  and  soul  united  in 
love. 

The  later  Rossetti,  as  we  have  seen,  moved  gradually 
away  from  the  direct  beauty-worship  of  his  youth. 
But  it  is  a  mistake  to  think — a  mistake  fostered  by 
Buchanan — that  his  gradual  cultivation  of  a  more 
exotic  style  sapped  the  foundation  of  his  loyalty  to  a 
high  ideal  of  conduct.  Not  Browning  himself  was 
more  strenuous  in  his  devotion  to  right  action,  though 
the  lessons  which  Browning  drew  from  dramatic 
conflicts  in  the  soul  Rossetti  preferred  to  exhibit  by 
external  symbols.  A  single  comparison  will  make 
this  clear.  There  is  a  sonnet  entitled  '  Vain  Virtues  ' 
in  Rossetti's  House  of  Life  which  conveys  precisely 
the  same  teaching  as  Browning's  The  Statue  and 
the  Bust,  examined  on  p.  284  above.  Browning 
dramatized  the  lesson,  applying  it  through  the  persons 
of  two  lovers  in  a  Florentine  fable.  Rossetti  rendered 
its  abstract  meaning  by  the  symbols  of  religious  art. 
'  What  is  the  sorriest  thing  that  enters  Hell  ?  '  he  begins 
by  asking,  thus  reviving  at  once  the  atmosphere  of 
mediaeval  painters.  '  None  of  the  sins  ',  he  declares, 
(and  we  recall  their  horrible  shapes),  '  but  this  and  that 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM  313 

fair  deed  which  a  soid's  sin  at  length  could  supersede '. 
Browning's  fable  shows  forth  the  same  truth,  that 
a  nominal  sin  may  be  better  than  the  most  closely 
cherished  virtue,  but,  while  Browning  sought  persons 
and  a  plot,  Rossetti  personified  the  ideas.  These 
vain  virtues — ^remember  Browning's  '  frustrate  ghosts  ' 
— are  '  virgins,  whom  death's  timely  knell  might  once 
have  sainted  ',  and,  even  in  Hell,  '  the  scorching  bride- 
groom leaves  their  refuse  maidenhood  abominable  '  : 

Night  sucks  them  down,  the  garbage  of  the  pit. 
Whose  names,  half-entered  ia  the  book  of  Life, 
Were  God's  desire  at  noon.     And  as  their  hair 

And  eyes  sink  last,  the  Torturer  deigns  no  whit 
To  gaze,  but,  yeamiag,  waits  his  worthier  wife, — 
The  Sin  still  bUthe  on  earth  that  sent  them  there. 

These  images,  '  Pre-Raphaelite  '  though  they  are,  and  An 
belonging  to  a  tradition  older  than  modern  sanctions  mode?*^ 
— to  theology  rather  than  to  psychology — hurt  us 
and  haunt  us  by  their  realism.  A  time  may  come 
when  the  symbols  will  be  worn  out,  when  '  hell '  and 
the  '  devil '  of  the  Middle  Ages  will  as  thoroughly  have 
forfeited  their  appeal  as  have  the  gods  of  Greek 
mythology.  Then  these  lines  will  possess  what  is 
called  a  merely  literary  interest.  Their  emotional 
power,  derived  from  the  impact  of  a  poet's  images  on 
a  sympathetic  imagination,  will  have  ceased  by  detri- 
tion ;  while  Browning's  dramatic  method,  appealing 
to  the  eternal  man  in  men,  will  still  continue  eflficacious. 
This  hypothetical  obsolescence  (or,  superannuation)  of 
a  medium  of  artistic  expression  is  no  part  of  our  present 
inquiry,   save   only  to   hazard   one   conclusion  :     The 


314     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

artist  (or  poet,  in  this  instance)  who  deliberately 
chooses  a  single  definite  medium,  with  clearly  marked 
characteristics  recommending  it  to  a  special  mood,  is 
more  likely  to  have  a  temporary  vogue,  or  intermittent 
temporary  vogues,  according  to  the  extent  of  the 
distribution  of  the  mood  at  its  first  period  or  at  its 
revivals,  than  an  artist,  or  poet,  whose  appeal  rests 
on  a  permanent  basis.  Rossetti,  in  other  words,  though 
to-day,  and,  it  may  be,  for  generations  to  come,  we  are 
deeply  sensitive  to  the  emotions  which  he  deemed 
consecrated  to  art,  runs  the  risk  of  missing  men's 
response,  not  to  the  beauties  of  his  style,  but  to  the 
images  of  his  thought.  In  his  return  to  what  he  held 
a  purer  medium  than  artists  were  employing  in  his 
day,  in  his  conscious  rejection  of  the  aids  to  expression 
formulated  in  reply  to  the  demands  of  art-material 
itself,  and  in  his  creation  by  his  own  enthusiasm  of 
a  circle  of  contemporary  sympathy,  he  sacrificed 
universalism  to  particularism,  and  concentric  to 
esoteric  art. 


§  6.  THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY. 


THE  Pre-Raphaelite  example  drove  several  writers 
in  this  age  to  pursue  the'search  for  the  life  beautiful. 
This  is  the  simplest  statement  of  a  somewhat  complex 
fact,  and  it  may  stand  at  the  head  of  a  list  of  names 
in  which  the  first  to  arrest  us  is  that  of  Christina  Rossetti, 
the  youngest  of  the  four  children  of  Gabriele  and  Frances 
(Polidori)  Rossetti,  Hers  was  the  beauty  of  asceticism, 
when  the  virtue  of  renouncement  in  literature  had  not 
yet  become  suspect  of  pose  ;  and,  before  passing  to  her 
poetry,  a  preliminary  question  arises  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  influence  we  are  discussing. 

Pre-Raphaelitism  was  idea  and  style.  As  idea,  it  Rossetti's 
attracted,  or  affected,  John  Ruskin,  among  Rossetti's 
seniors,  and,  among  his  younger  admirers,  notably 
William  Morris  and  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne. 
As  style  it  affected  these  directly,  and,  coming  into 
association  with  Tennyson's  elaborate  word-music, 
it  revived  the  attention  to  formal  excellence  which 
Wordsworth,  for  instance,  had  postponed  to  the  claims 
of  the  moral  imagination.  In  this  aspect,  its  influence 
is  to  be  traced  in  Christina  Rossetti  herself,  in  Coventry 
Patmore,    Walter    Pater,    John    Addington    Symonds 


3i6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and,  among  living  writers, 
in  Mrs.  Meynell  and  others. 

So  far,  the  statement  is  simple,  but  considerable 
reservations  must  be  made.  Influence  in  literature 
is  always  a  confusing  and  difficult  quest,  liable  to  the 
shattering  danger  of  being  misread  as  a  charge  of  imita- 
tion. It  works  by  subtlety  and  -finesse,  by  remin- 
iscences of  diction  and  rhythm,  and  by  an  adherence, 
mainly  unconscious,  to  a  strong  and  masterful  tradition. 
The  tradition  of  Tennyson  and  Rossetti  was  undoubtedly 
of  this  kind.  On  sonie  writers  Tennyson's  was  stronger, 
and  on  others  Rossetti's  :  it  would  be  an  endless  labour, 
and,  finally,  unprofitable,  to  parcel  out  the  field  between 
them.  The  point  is  that,  without  their  example,  these 
particular  aims  in  style  might  never  have  been  culti- 
vated. 

At  the  same  time,  an  equally  important  point  is  that 
such  cultivators  of  style  were,  in  the  main,  and  indi- 
vidually, original  thinkers  and  independent  craftsmen. 
Certain  mannerisms  in  common  were  inherited,  or 
acquired,  by  some  of  their  descendants.  There  have 
been  so-called  aesthetic  writers,  with  too  much  of  the 
egotist  about  them,  who  engendered  the  faults  of  a 
clique  and  nursed  a  literary  mysticism.  They  petted 
their  nebular  transbodiments  and  fondled  their  pro- 
leptic  ghosts.  This  danger  is  inherent  in  style,  regarded 
as  an  end,  not  a  means,  and  employed  without  inspira- 
tion upon  spent  materials  of  composition.  But,  on 
the  whole,  English  literatiu"e  of  the  last  century  is 
singularly  and  honourably  free  from  genius  manifest 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  317 

in  its  eccentricities.  On  the  whole,  it  may  fairly  be 
said  to  contain  but  few  hothouse  specimens,  and  to 
display,  throughout  its  course,  from  William  Cowper 
to  George  Meredith,  a  sane  and  constant  sensibility 
to  the  influences  of  wind  and  sun,  and  a  certain  moral 
preoccupation — which  shone  equally  on  Chaucer's 
pilgrims'  way,  in  the  fairyland  of  Spenser,  and  the  para- 
dise of  Milton — ,  never  wholly  disused. 

So  we  greet  the  schoolmen  of  beauty  as  a  vital  force 
in  English  letters.  The  Pre-Raphaelite  movement, 
when  it  came,  came  wholesomely  and  desirably.  It 
created — partly  by  the  circumstance  of  its  rise  in  a 
material  age,  more,  perhaps,  by  the  temperament 
of  its  prime  mover,  with  Southern  warmnesses  in  his 
blood — a  respect  for  beautiful  writing,  re-animate  from 
Keats  and  Spenser.  And  it  came  at  a  favourable  time. 
It  arrived,  or  served,  as  a  protest  against  the  plate - 
glass  window  point  of  view  staring  out  of  the  walls  of 
the  Crystal  Palace  (1851),  and  against  the  half -smug, 
half-mock  respectability  of  prosperous  cotton-spinners' 
ideals,  of  which  the  Great  Exhibition  was  so  successful 
an  expression.  Moreover,  encountering  the  contro- 
versy between  knowledge  and  belief,  the  pursuit  of 
beauty  in  art  and  life  (in  art  as  life,  according  to  some 
prophets)  was  reinforced  by  the  demand  for  beauty 
in  thought,  for  the  re-establishment  of  the  faculty  of 
imagination  in  the  judgment  of  affairs.  Thus,  beauty 
became  strengthened  by  utility.  Morris  translated 
its  principles  into  practical  wall-papers  and  furniture. 
Ruskin  extended  its  canons  from  art  to  economics. 


3i8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  novelists  applied  its  promise  to  the  fortunes  of  the 
poor.  And,  finally,  Sir  W.  S.  Gilbert  and  the  late  Sir 
Arthur  Sullivan  were  in  waiting  to  ridicule  in  opera 
the  excesses  of  a  cult.  These  developments,  as  far 
as  they  are  separable  from  the  social  history  of  the  times 
— from  the  history  of  socialism  in  its  early  phases — 
will  be  considered  in  their  due  place.  Here  it  is  enough 
to  have  recognized  how  the  good  inherent  in  Pre- 
Raphaelitism  enriched  the  resources  of  English  literature 
both  as  style  and  as  idea,  and  how  its  potential  evil  was 
corrected  by  contact  with  reality,  through  extension, 
through  reaction,  and  through  satire.  Rossetti's  genius 
was  unique.  His  temperament  lent  him  the  courage, 
and  ensured  the  artistic  consistency,  which  an  English- 
man 'pur  sang  would  have  missed.  He  was  not  only 
fearless  of  ridicule  in  the  direct  communication  of  his 
ideas,  according  to  the  vision  that  was  in  him,  but, 
further,  he  possessed  a  sense  of  beauty  in  a  degree  not 
native  to  English  soil — a  British  Romeo  is  inconceiv- 
able— ;  and  with  this  he  succeeded  in  infecting  a  band 
of  disciples  and  friends.  In  the  beginning,  the  sanction 
of  beauty  was  binding  on  the  man  as  well  as  on  his 
work,  and,  while  the  glow  lasted  and  the  brotherhood 
held  together,  a  rare  standard  of  perfection  was  attained. 
It  failed,  as  such  ideals  must  fail  when  the  bond  is 
dissolved.  The  Englishmen  fur  sang  took  it  over, 
and  applied  it  to  utilitarian  ends  or  combined  it  with 
moral  aims. 

We   come   back   to   Christina  Rossetti,   who  never 
relaxed  the  obligation.     Physical  suffering,  the  burden 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  319 

of  which  increased  with  increasing  years,  must  be  held  to  Christina 

,    ,.     .    ,.  Rossetti 

account  in  part  for  the  rigorous  spiritual  discipline  to  (isso- 
which  she  constantly  submitted  herself,  and  which  she  '' 
bore  with  that  cheerful  conscientiousness  which  so  often 
surprises  us  in  women.  She  is  said  (by  her  surviving 
brother)  to  have  sacrificed  two  suitors,  with  one  of 
whom — Cayley,  the  translator  of  Dante, — she  was 
herself  in  love,  to  religious  scrupulosity,  and  her  poems, 
largely  devotional,  bear  eloquent  witness  to  her  search 
for  inward  peace.  As  an  artist,  she  was  thoroughly 
seized  with  the  more  obvious  appeal — the  more  external 
aspects — of  Pre-Raphaelitism.  The  magnificence  noted 
by  Keats  overwhelmed  her  with  its  spiritual  emblems. 
Trollope  says  of  one  of  his  characters  that,  '  in  religion, 
she  was  a  pure  Druidess  '  ;  of  Christina  Rossetti  we 
may  say  that,  in  religion,  she  was  a  pure  Pre-Raphaelite. 
Her  poetry  breathes  adoration.  It  is  drenched  with 
the  visible  signs  of  an  active  and  an  observant  faith. 
The  poet,  as  pains  and  sorrows  multiplied,  became 
more  and  more  of  a  recluse,  and  her  work,  always 
cloistral,  deepened  gradually  in  intensity. 

Her  style  was  exquisite  throughout.  She  displayed 
in  a  rare  degree  that  feeling  for  words — the  tact  in  their 
choice  and  disposition — which  is,  from  first  to  last,  a 
characteristic  of  Victorian  literature.  In  another 
quality  of  the  age  she  was  more  successful  even  than 
her  brother  :  it  is  in  what,  for  want  of  a  better  term, 
may  be  called  eeriness,  or  intimate  grotesqueness. 
Goblin  Market  ranks  in  this  respect  with  Robert 
Browning's    Pied   Piper   of   Hamelin   and    Meredith's 


320     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Woods  of  Westermain,  as  a  supreme  example  of  the 
faculty.  No  one  who  reads  it  can  forget  it.  The 
rush  and  pattering  of  elfin  feet,  intent  on  their  mis- 
chievous machinations,  the  chattering  of  elfin  tongues, 
the  deliciousness  of  the  fare  they  ofier,  the  invasion 
of  the  sisters'  white  purity,  the  horror  of  the  imminent 
corruption,  the  sacrifice,  the  brave  renunciation — the 
realism  and  imagination  of  it  all  combine  to  make  up 
a  poem  of  a  kind  of  which  we  wish  that  Miss  Rossetti 
had  left  more.  It  is  dated  1859 — the  year  of  The 
Origin  of  Species,  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel  and 
Adam  Bede  :  one  of  many  great  years  in  this  epoch — , 
and  the  fifty  years  that  have  elapsed  increase  its  pure 
poetic  value.  It  must  have  been  on  this  side  of  the 
author's  genius,  we  late  Victorians  are  fain  to  think — 
reconstructing  the  times  of  which  our  fathers  have  told 
us — ,  that  '  Lewis  Carroll ',  her  friend  in  later  life, 
found  sympathetic  afl&nity. 

The  same  delicate  fancy  which  peopled  the  '  brook- 
side  rushes  '  with  a  rout  of  elfin  merchantmen  revealed 
the  beauties  of  heaven  to  the  poet's  sore  and  yearning 
eyes.  Her  imaginings  of  the  beatific  life  are  marked 
by  a  daring  devoutness  of  an  unusual  kind.  Her  fine 
lyrical  gift  was  joined  to  an  ecstatic  perception,  not  so 
much  of  personal  emotion,  as  of  sorrow  and  vanity  as 
ideas.  She  seemed  to  walk  securely  among  sublimities, 
and  to  accept  as  first  principles  of  cosmic  harmony 
conclusions  which  weaker  men  hardly  reach  through 
years  of  travail.  Thus,  her  devotional  poems  may  be 
said  to  begin  where  that  class  of  verse  commonly  leaves 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  321 

off.  The  impression  produced  upon  the  reader  is  of  a 
kind  of  rarefied  atmosphere  of  singular  truth  and  purity. 
It  is  not  quite  sacred,  at  least  in  the  conventional 
sense,  and  it  is  certainly  not  profane.  It  is  virtually 
non-moral  in  its  attitude  towards  the  religious  mood. 


u. 

In  passing  from  Christina  Rossetti  to  William  Morris  William 
(1834-1896),  we  pass  chiefly  from  a  woman  to  a  man.  (I834- 
Rossetti's  sister  and  his  friend  both  fell  imder  his  l^^^)- 
influence.  Morris,  his  junior  by  six  years,  was  an  early 
adherent  to  the  brotherhood.  '  Rossetti  says  I  ought  to 
paint,  he  says  I  shall  be  able  '  ;  'I  want  to  imitate 
Gabriel  as  much  as  I  can  ' — these  are  typical  utterances 
in  or  about  1858,  of  the  man  who  was  later  to  lead  a 
socialist  secession  from  the  Democratic  Federation, 
and  who  was  to  manifest,  throughout  his  career, 
a  sturdy  and  unconventional  self-dependence.  This 
early  influence  of  Rossetti  is  a  factor  of  importance  in 
Morris's  life.  Their  years  of  joint  residence  at  Kelms- 
cott,  and  Rossetti's  partnership  in  the  decorating- 
firm  of  Morris,  Marshall,  Faulkner  and  Company  (1861  ; 
afterwards  Morris  and  Company),  left  permanent  im- 
pressions on  the  younger  man's  character  and  writings. 
His  first  book.  The  Defence  of  Guenevere  and  Other  Poems 
(1858),  was  inscribed  '  to  my  friend,  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti,  painter ',  and  it  displays  the  characteristics 
of  the  school,  in  masculine  hands,  as  clearly  as  they 

21 


322     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

are  displayed,  in  feminine  hands,  by  Rossetti's  in- 
spired sister.  The  difference  is  of  sex  and  race. 
Morris's  manhood  predominated.  There  was  more 
than  a  touch  of  Dr.  Johnson  in  his  composition.  He 
was  big,  and  bluff,  and  burly.  He  was  apt  to  smash 
what  he  despised.  He  had  the  tenderness  of  a  big  man 
towards  little  people — the  little  people  of  life  and  of 
fancy — ,  and  the  contempt  of  a  great  mind  for  mean- 
nesses. The  faith  which  glorified  renouncement  in 
Christina  Rossetti,  in  William  Morris  glorified  accept- 
ance. Secondly,  he  was  free  from  the  Latin  strain, 
which — as  in  Flaubert,  for  instance, — can  detach 
the  artist  from  his  emotions,  and  the  lover  from  the 
object  of  his  love.  The  beauty  for  beauty's  sake  of 
Rossetti  became,  with  Morris,  beauty  for  the  sake  of 
life.  He,  too,  held  beauty  most  desirable,  and  sought 
her  where  she  is  to  be  found,  following  Rossetti  in 
his  quest  to  idealized  tracts  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But, 
finding  her,  he  turned  her  to  high  uses.  The  virtues 
of  chivalry,  revisited,  were  virtues  of  man  for  men. 
It  was  true,  as  Pre-Raphaelitism  implied,  that  the 
application  of  science  to  industry  and  of  knowledge 
to  belief  had  obliterated  the  ancient  landmarks  of 
magnanimity,  generosity,  pride  of  labour,  devotion, 
purpose,  faith,  awe,  reverence,  humility.  But  to 
restore  these,  in  art,  by  a  reversion  to  the  old  tradition, 
to  collect  them,  to  arrange  them,  and  to  adore  them, 
without  reference  to  conduct,  was  too  indefinite  a 
scheme  of  idealism  for  Morris's  practical  temper.  He 
exalted  them  in  his  poetry,  he  imitated  them  in  his 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  323 

crafts,  but,  above  all,  he  interpreted  them  for  practice. 
Act  the  life  beautiful,  as  well  as  behold  it,  was  his  im- 
passioned appeal  from  the  contemplation  of  beauty 
to  the  life  beautiful  revealed.  He  wrote  fairy-tales 
for  the  children  of  light,  and  tried  to  verify  them  for 
the  children  of  this  world. 

Morris  was  a  man  of  action  first,  and  those  who  read 
the  story  of  his  life,  as  told  by  Mr.  Mackail  ^ ,  will  realize 
the  significance  of  his  change  '  from  the  romantic  to 
the  epic  manner  ',  from  Guenevere  and  The  Earthly 
Paradise  to  The  Story  of  Sigurd  the  Volsung.  In  his 
Northern  tales  of  the  Niblungs  and  the  Wolfings  he  found 
material  more  apt  to  his  hand  than  in  the  epyllia  of 
Greece  which  he  adorned.  The  tapestry  appropriate 
to  romance  was  laid  aside  for  narration  and  exhortation, 
and  these  were  combined  in  a  note  intimate  with  a  keen 
sensibility  to  the  needs  of  his  day  and  his  own  ability 
to  supply  them.  The  lessons  of  the  muse  of  the  North 
were  '  no  bad  thing ',  we  are  reminded,  '  to  infiltrate 
into  the  weakened  blood  of  England.  I  think  that 
living  in  these  stories  nursed  the  modern  revolutionist 
in  Morris,  and  added  imagination  to  the  energy  with 
which  he  took  up  in  his  socialism  the  cause  of  the  enslaved 
in  England.  .  .  .  Like  Sigurd,  he  fought  with  the 
dragon  of  Capitalism  .  .  •  ;  like  Sigurd,  time  and  fate 
were  against  him ',  and  so  forth  {Four  Poets.  By 
Stopford  A.  Brooke.  Pitman,  p.  245).  This  parallelism 
is,  perhaps,  a  little  fanciful,  and  it  may  be  more  correct 

^  The  Life   of    William    Morris.     By   J.    W.    Mackail.     2   vols. 
Longmans. 


324     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

to  say  that  Morris's  ardent  quest  of  beauty,  as  the 
man  was  developed  from  the  youth,  was  turned  from 
dreaming  to  acting.  '  The  idle  singer  of  an  empty 
day  ',  as  he  described  himself  in  the  refrain  of  the  Apology 
and  Envoy  to  The  Earthly  Paradise,  became — as  man- 
kind itself  became — the  busy  builder  of  monuments 
to  progress  ;  and  the  artist  in  Morris  turned  with  him 
to  tales  of  a  more  enduring  heroism,  out  of  which  to 
justify  and  defend  his  belief  in  the  destiny  of  man. 
But,  whichever  way  we  use  the  analogy,  whether  we 
account  for  the  propaganda  by  the  poetry  or  for  the 
poetry  by  the  propaganda,  the  propagandist  of  social 
welfare  and  the  poet  of  heroic  blood  were  united  in 
William  Morris  for  noble  and  useful  ends.  His  poetry 
is  easier  to  enjoy  than  that  of  some  of  the  Victorians. 
He  deliberately  limited  its  range.  He  clipped  the 
wings  of  style,  and  was  content  to  produce  his  effects 
within  a  definite  circle  of  diction  and  fancy.  He 
employed  '  stock  '  epithets  and  figures.  He  created  a 
literary  atmosphere,  within  which  he  moved  securely, 
and  outside  which  he  rarely  tried  experiments.  These 
limits  lent  him  the  powers  of  fluency  and  ease  in  com- 
position which  his  readers  appreciate  so  well. 

He  wrote  prose  as  well  as  poetry  :  economic-political 
prose — of  the  kind  which  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  had 
raised,  or  were  raising,  above  its  class — ,  in  addresses 
on  art  and  industry,  in  News  from  Nowhere  and  A 
Dream  of  John  Ball ;  romantic-imaginative  prose,  of  a 
kind  new  in  English  literature  since  Mandeville  and 
Malory,  in  The  Story  of  the  Glittering  Plain,  The  Wood 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  325 

beyond  the  World,  and  others.  But,  above  all,  this 
lover  of  old  times  for  the  sake  of  the  new  time  to  be 
was  filled  with  an  overmastering  desire  to  light  on  the 
cold  altars  of  to-day  the  fires  of  ancient  sacrifice,  to 
kindle  in  the  chill  hearts  of  his  fellow-men  a  passion 
intolerant  of  wrong,  and  to  sow  our  leaden  skies  with 
the  colour  and  the  pattern  of  romance  : 

Ever  was  the  heart  within  him  hot 
To  gaia  the  Land  of  Matters  Unforgot. 

The  '  magic  casements  '  flung  aside  by  Keats  revealed 
a  fairyland  of  beauty  ;  William  Morris  cherished  the 
ambition  to  people  it  with  living  men  and  women. 


m. 

A  moment  of  retrospection  is  required.  It  must  Recapitu- 
be  clear  to  every  one  who  has  followed  the  course  of 
poetry  to  this  point  that  the  direct  line  of  succession 
is  divided,  or  disputed,  between  two  schools.  This 
divergence  dates  right  back  to  the  Lyrical  Ballads  of 
1798.  The  inventive  mysticism  of  Coleridge  followed  a 
different  road  from  the  natural  mysticism  of  Wordsworth, 
though  they  proceeded  from  the  same  source  and 
aimed  at  the  same  goal.  One  sought  to  make  symbols 
interpretative,  the  other  to  desymbolize  experience. 
One  based  the  Real  on  the  Ideal,  the  other  the  Ideal 
on  the  Real.  These  are  rough  and  general  distinctions, 
modifiable  at  almost  every  step,  and  the  details  must 


326  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

be  gathered  from  preceding  sections.  But  they  serve 
to  mark  the  succession,  in  the  poetic  line,  of  Words- 
worth and  Meredith,  as  poets  of  transcendental  being 
treated  in  philosophic  language,  with  Robert  Browning 
illustrating  by  examples  the  truth  which  these  taught 
directly.  The  mysticism  of  Coleridge  was  reinforced 
by  the  medievalism  of  Keats.  Together  they  passed 
through  the  twilight  of  poets  like  Beddoes  and  Darley, 
and  acquired  certain  formal  characteristics  of  consider- 
able value  to  their  art.  Shelley,  the  angel  of  revolt, 
and  Byron,  the  unfulfilled  seeker,  belong  to  both  lines 
and  to  neither.  When  the  Coleridge-Keats  tradition 
emerged  from  the  miniature  Middle  Ages  of  1825  to  1840, 
it  brought  with  it,  among  others,  Alfred  Tennyson, 
who,  in  his  philosophic  and  patriotic  poems  {In 
Memoriam  and  the  Ode  on  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  for 
example),  reverted  to  Wordsworth's  themes  '  of  blessed 
consolation  in  distress  '  and  '  of  joy  in  widest  common- 
alty spread  ',  though  he  comprehended  them  less  than 
quite  adequately  under  modern  aspects  of  evolutionary 
science  ;  and  who,  in  his  Idylls  and  in  other  poems, 
continued  the  medieval  symbolizing,  with  a  less  than 
complete  absorption  in  the  beauties  of  the  past.  Be- 
tween them,  he  achieved  a  few  poems  {The  Lady  of 
Shalott  has  been  instanced)  which  belong  exclusively 
and  fully  to  the  second  line  of  succession.  In  this 
line  Rossetti,  introducing  an  analytic — or  detached — 
point  of  view  into  the  emotions  of  creative  art,  dis- 
covered what  was  amiss  with  English  poetry.  Its 
wisdom  was  becoming  sophistication ;    its  principles 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  327 

were  degenerating  into  conventions  ;  and  its  cue  was 
to  go  straight  back  to  medieval  gardens  of  enchant- 
ment. A  profusion  of  beautiful  images  decorating 
the  simplest  ideas  was,  in  esssence,  the  method  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelites.  It  brought  the  magic  of  the  word, 
and  the  music  of  the  stanza,  and  the  deliberate,  elaborate 
devices  of  metre,  and  rhyme,  and  rhythm  to  a  pitch 
which  had  never  hitherto  been  reached,  and  can  verily 
never  be  surpassed,  at  the  present  stage  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  English  language.  When  Browning's 
feelings  become  expressible  melodiously,  and  Meredith's 
intuitions  intelligibly — when  social  psychology  is  an 
exact  science — ,  then  poetry  will  find  a  new  language 
upon  which  to  exercise  its  powers.  Meanwhile,  in  this 
temple  of  poesy,  Rossetti  became  high  priest,  his 
sister  tended  the  vestal  flame,  and  Morris,  clothed  in 
rent  raiment  of  stories  often  sung,  went  out  to  do  battle 
in  crusades. 


IV. 

We  come  to  the  youngest,  the  most  certain,  and,  Algernon 
poetically,  the   strongest   of   this   school.     Swinburne  Swin- 
was  born  in  1837,  and  was  thus  nine  years  junior  to  ^"™®' 
Rossetti  and  three  to  William  Morris.     He  paid  them  an 
eloquent  tribute,  as  also  Edward  Burne-Jones,  in  the 
dedication  to  Poems  and  Ballads,  the   first  series  of 
which  (1866)  was  the  fourth  book  which  Swinburne 
published.     The   other  three  were   The  Queen-Mother 
and  Rosamond,  Atalanta  in  Calydon  and  Chastelard,  all 


328     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  them  dramas,  though  the  middle  one,  Atalanta,  was 
rich  with  the  lyrical  beauties  more  fully  displayed  in 
the  next  volume.  That  volume.  Poems  and  Ballads, 
revealed  to  the  modest  gaze  of  middle-Victorian 
matrons — in  the  most  bourgeois  years  of  May  Queen 
sentiment  and  of  a  widowed  Court — other  aspects 
which  seemed  less  desirable.  If  we  search  this  volume 
to-day  (especially  if  we  take  as  a  standard  the  average 
novel  of  the  hour)  for  the  improprieties  which  shocked 
our  grandmothers,  we  shall  find  a  certain  excess  of 
voluptuous  or  sensuous  imagery,  but,  while  we  shall 
be  cheated  of  the  shudders  which  shook  society,  we 
shall  be  rewarded  by  an  outburst  of  music,  breaking 
insistently  on  our  ears,  and  drowning  the  thinner 
voices  in  its  finer  and  its  fuller  strains.  The  chased 
designs  and  decorous  experiments  of  the  new  school  of 
poets  were  swept  away  on  the  torrent  of  Swinburne's 
verse.  He  triumphantly  gathered  it  all  up — the 
metres,  the  vocabularies,  the  word-lore — ,  and  stormed 
the  citadel  of  taste  with  forces  in  various  array.  Some 
advanced  with  stately  measure,  some  rushed  in  a  kind 
of  cascade,  some  threatened  and  retired  under  elaborate 
regulation.  All  alike  were  marshalled  by  genius  ;  the 
sunshine  poured  on  them  all,  and  gave  these  wonderful 
poems  colour  and  light  and  vibrancy. 

The  martial  metaphor  is  appropriate  because  Swin- 
burne's poetry  has  the  effect  of  a  great  military  review. 
Those  who  have  watched  this  effect  on  the  Tempelhof 
Plain  near  Berlin,  for  example,  will  doubtless  concede 
the   likeness.     The   poet   himself   concedes   it   in   the 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  329 

'  Dedication  to  Joseph  Mazzini '  of  Songs  before  Sun- 
rise (1871)  : 

I  bring  you  the  sword  of  a  song, 
The  sword  of  my  spirit's  desire. 
Feeble ;  but  laid  at  your  feet ; 
That  which  was  weak  shall  be  strong. 
That  which  was  cold  shall  take  fire. 
That  which  was  bitter  be  sweet. 

It  was  wrought  not  with  hands  to  smite, 

Nor  hewn  after  swordsmiths'  fashion. 

Nor  tempered  on  anvil  of  steel ; 

But  with  visions  and  dreams  of  the  night, 

But  with  hope,  and  the  patience  of  passion, 

And  the  signet  of  love  for  a  seal. 

Be  it  witness,  till  one  more  strong. 
Till  a  loftier  lyre,  till  a  rarer 
Lute  praise  her  better  than  I, 
Be  it  witness  before  you,  my  song. 
That  I  knew  her,  the  world's  banner-bearer. 
Who  shall  cry  the  repubhcan  cry. 

His  gift  is  '  the  sword  of  a  song  '.  Homer's  similes  of 
panoply  in  the  second  book  of  the  Iliad  may  be  trans- 
ferred, unaltered,  to  Swinburne's  poetry.  It  marches 
'  like  ravaging  fire  in  a  forest  on  a  mountain's  height ', 
with  '  dazzling  gleam  from  innumerable  bronze '. 
'  Even  as  the  goatherds  easily  divide  the  ranging  flocks 
of  goats  when  they  mingle  in  the  pasture  ',  so  does 
the  poet  mete  his  forces  on  this  side  and  on  that,  '  his 
head  and  eyes  like  unto  Zeus,  whose  joy  is  in  the 
thunder  '.  It  is  all  there  except  the  casus  belli,  and 
to  the  absence  thereof  may,  perhaps,  be  ascribed  an 
occasional  emptiness,  or   hoUowness,  or  even  aimless- 


330     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ness  in  the  display.  We  feel  that  it  is  too  beautiful 
to  be  quite  real.  The  ebullient  lines  crash  and  break  ; 
the  tremulous  ripple  is  accomplished  ;  but  not  even 
the  vision  of  revolution,  which  dominates  many  of  the 
poems,  succeeds  wholly  in  vivifying — in  actualizing — 
the  poetry  in  every  instance. 

Certain  factors  are  obvious  in  Swinburne.  His  range 
of  metres  is  incomparable,  from  his  first  volume  to 
his  last.  By  refinements  of  equivalence  in  prosody,  by 
sense-concomitant  variations  of  rhythm,  and  by  a  power 
of  verbal  music  evoking  melodies  of  phrase  and  sound, 
Swinburne's  fearless  vigour  of  language  has  been 
enabled  to  surpass  the  harmonies  even  of  Tennyson. 
Overflow,  again,  is  a  word  which  applies  forcibly  to 
Swinburne.  Dreams,  thrills,  lures,  pallor,  sweetness, 
mooniness,  light,  lustre  and  delight,  all  these  are 
clearly  in  plenty — to  some,  clearly  in  excess.  The 
time  is  not  yet,  however,  for  a  correct  judgment  of 
this  poet.  There  have  been  three  series  of  Poems  and 
Ballads  (1866,  1878  and  1889)  ;  there  have  been  several 
series  of  Songs  {of  Italy,  1867  ;  before  Sunrise,  1871  ; 
of  Two  Nations,  1876  ;  of  the  Spring-tides,  1880),  as 
well  as  A  Century  of  Roundels  (1883),  Astrophel  and 
Other  Poems  (1894),  etc.  ;  there  have  been  the  plays 
— Chastelard,  Bothwell,  and  Mary  Stuart  among  the 
English  ;  Atalanta  and  Erectheus  among  the  Greek — ; 
there  have  been  Arthurian  tales  in  verse — Tristram  of 
Lyonesse  and  Balen — ,  and  there  have  been  prose 
works  of  masterly  criticism  on  William  Blake,  Charlotte 
Bronte,  Victor  Hugo — the  French  note  in  Swinburne 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  331 

is  emphatic — ,  and  the  contemporaries  of  Shake- 
speare. It  is  a  long  but  now  a  finished  list, 
for  Swinburne  died  at  his  house  in  Putney 
while  these  pages  were  passing  through  the  press 
(April  10th,  1909).  In  the  very  shadow  of  his 
death  praise  is  more  seemly  than  criticism. 
Posterity  will,  perhaps,  credit  him  with  an  achieve- 
ment unmatched — and  necessarily  unique — in  the 
splendid  story  of  English  poetry.  Unmatched,  because 
no  other  poet  has  so  fully  availed  himself  of  such 
ample  opportunities.  Formal  beauty  was  immediately 
perfectible,  and  Swinburne  perfected  its  resources. 
National  freedom  was  immediately  seizable,  and 
Swinburne  seized  its  ideas.  The  Arthurian  legends 
were  in  every  poet's  wallet — except  Browning's  and 
Meredith's,  the  transcendentalists — and  Swinburne  was 
the  youngest  of  the  '  romantics '.  The  Elizabethan 
tradition,  explored  in  the  twilight,  was  waiting  for 
illumination  at  noon.  But  unique,  because,  conceiv- 
ably, his  achievement  can  never  be  repeated.  The 
same  combination  of  the  same  chances  is  never  likely 
to  recur.  Other  chances  may  be  similarly  combined, 
and  may  find  an  equally  brilliant  exponent,  but  the 
powers  of  this  particular  combination  must  be  taken 
as  exhausted.  The  thought  of  their  fresh  employment 
is  too  fatiguing.  Even  in  Swinburne  the  fervour  of 
the  phrase  is  not  invariably  a  fervour  of  the  blood, 
and  later  poets  let  loose  on  the  same  material  would 
increase  the  distance  between  the  two.  It  is  as  the 
voice  of  the  eleventh  hour  of  a  great  cycle  that  we, 


332     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

groping  for  light  in  the  perplexed  dawn  of  a  new  age, 
venture  finally  to  commemorate  Swinburne. 


Beauty,  struck  sharp  on  sorrow,  makes  dreadful 
music.  There  were  three  poets  in  this  age  who  were 
urged  in  various  degrees  by  the  quest  of  a  sanction, 
and  who  were  joined  in  missing  its  reconciliation  with 
experience.  The  comparative  shortness  of  their  lives 
should  not  be  left  out  of  account.  Arthur  Hugh  Clough 
(1819-61)  died  at  the  age  of  forty-two  ;  James  Thomson 
(1834-82)  died  at  the  age  of  forty-eight ;  Arthur 
O'Shaughnessy  (1844-81)  died  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
sevcii ;  and  Thomson,  the  longest-lived,  was  the 
unhappiest  in  temperament  and  in  fortune.  Unresting 
sons  of  the  muse,  who  find  earth  a  harsh  stepmother, 
and  who  die  on  the  threshold  of  middle  age,  feeling 
the  chill  of  its  advance  but  falling  short  of  its  ultimate 
tranquillity,  will  not  write  happy  poetry  out  of  the 
full  fate  of  a  Morris  or  a  Swinburne. 
Arthur  Clough,  the  eldest  of  the  three,  sailed  into  tranquil 
Clough.  harbourage  but  a  few  short  years  before  his  death. 
The  Board  of  Education  brought  him  employment, 
and  his  wife  brought  him  content.  Till  then  he  had 
been  a  fellow  of  Oriel,  a  freethinker — the  two  were 
incompatible — ,  a  wanderer  in  America,  a  tutor  at 
Cambridge,  and,  by  disposition  at  least,  a  man  of 
unsettled  habits   and  indecisive  opinions.     The  times 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  333 

were  too  exacting  for  his  talents.  His  gentle  and 
earnest  spirit  was  borne  down  by  the  battle  of  the 
creeds,  like  a  leaf  on  a  stream.  He  was  always  asking 
whither  'i  and  whence  ?  '  Where  lies  the  land  to  which 
the  ship  would  go  ?  '  ;  'Is  this  the  object,  end,  and 
law.  And  purpose  of  our  being  here  ?  '.  This  note  of 
seeking,  of  questioning,  most  often  with  the  metaphor 
from  the  sea,  recurs  in  Clough's  few  poems  with  insistent 
iteration.  Sometimes  it  rises  to  a  prayer,  a  sceptic's 
prayer  though  it  be,  as  in  the  well-known  Qua  Cursum 
Ventus — '  0  bounding  breeze,  0  rushing  seas  !  At  last, 
at  last,  unite  them  there  '  ;  but  commonly  it  subsides 
in  doubt,  and  even  subsists  on  doubt,  and  not  even 
fate's  apology  for  his  incomplete  career  can  make  a 
great  poet  out  of  this  attractive  thinker  on  great 
issues. 

Thomson,  whom  his  biographers  assess  as  a  '  recal-  James 
citrant '  by  nature,  wrote  poems  which  Mr.  Bertram 
DobeU  has  recently  collected  in  two  volumes,  and  of 
which  the  best  known  by  name  is  The  City  of  Dreadful 
Night.  There  are  certain  influences  which  criticism 
must  reckon  with  in  dealing  with  this  writer.  Many 
of  his  poems  were  published  over  the  initials  '  B.  V.', 
which  stood  for  Bysshe  Vanolis,  recalling  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley  and  Novalis  (Friedrich  von  Hardenberg). 
Another  influence  was  the  late  Mr.  Bradlaugh.  Another 
was  the  idealization  of  a  very  early  love-affair.  Another, 
unfortunately,  was  drink.  From  this  amalgam  was 
made  a  poet  whose  work  undoubtedly  belongs  to  the 
particular  class  we  are  discussing.     He  saw  horror  and 


nessy. 


334     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

he  felt  despair  ;  but  the  horror  of  the  spectacle  and 
the  desperate  emotion  are  the  revelation  and  the 
expression  of  the  same  search  and  desire  as  opened 
heaven  to  happier  men's  eyes.  Thomson's  poetry  can 
never  be  popular,  and  much  of  it  may  be  passed  by  ; 
but,  historically,  it  is  necessary  to  a  complete  picture 
of  this  period,  and,  from  the  personal  point  of  view, 
it  has  the  fascination  of  abysmal  gloom. 
O'Shaugh-  O'Shaughnessy  likewise  belongs  to  this  outgrowth 
of  Pre-Raphaelitism.  Music  and  Moonlight  is  the 
title  of  one  of  his  volumes,  and  it  may  serve  to  sum- 
marize his  poems.  He  mooned  and  mused  through 
life  in  no  derogatory  sense,  or,  at  least,  in  no  sense 
more  derogatory  than  these  terms  of  ineffectiveness 
convey.  His  technical  skill  in  music  enabled  him  to 
combine  vocal  sounds  in  melodies  which  poetic  language 
had  rarely,  if  ever,  attained,  though  he,  too,  a  seeker 
for  beauty,  lacked  the  strength  which  conquers  in  the 
search. 


VI. 

Other  Here,  too,  other  writers  must  be  mentioned  in  a 
kind  of  catalogue  of  honour.  To  examine  all  would 
be  tedious.  Each  has  an  excellence  of  his  own. 
Together  they  constitute  a  force  of  which  English 
literature  is  proud,  but  separately  none  was  so  great 
as  to  pass  that  undefined  line  which  divides  for  all 
lovers  of  poetry  the  minor  from  the  major  poets. 

At  the  head  of  this  list — as  is  due  to  the  association 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  335 

of  the  year  of  his  birth — stands  Edward  Fitzgerald 
(1809-83),  intimate  friend  of  Tennyson  and  others  of 
his  great  contemporaries,  and  author  of  a  poem  of  rare 
beauty  and  exceptional  influence,  The  Rubaiyat 
of  Omar  Khayyam.  The  Eastern  philosopher  thus 
rendered  into  sensuous  quatrains  would,  doubtless, 
not  recognize  his  thoughts  in  their  modern  English  dress. 
The  fiction  of  translation  availed  as  a  pretext  for  the 
metaphors  from  the  nightingale  and  rose  and  other 
images  of  an  Oriental  garden,  but  the  value  of  the 
poem  consists  in  its  frank  material  hedonism,  combined 
with  a  fearless  death-mysticism  and  expressed  in 
stanzas  of  haunting  charm.  Posterity  will  probably 
judge  that  the  merits  of  the  Rubaiyat  have  been  over- 
estimated during  the  last  twenty  years,  as  it  has  judged 
already  the  rest  of  Fitzgerald's  scanty  writings.  His 
truer  fame  rests  in  his  letters,  which  conserve  the 
characteristics  of  a  personality  well-beloved  by  selected 
friends. 

Lord  Houghton  (Richard  Monckton-Milnes)  is 
another  of  the  1809  men,  and  he  lived  till  1885.  He, 
too,  was  a  kind  of  social  force,  a  focus  of  letters  rather 
than  a  man  of  letters,  though  he  wrote  some  admirable 
verse,  and  not  a  little  good  criticism.  Thomas  Gordon 
Hake  and  John  Stuart  Blackie  were  likewise  born  in 
the  same  year  ;  the  one  wrote  poetry  in  parables,  and 
the  other — a  teacher  and  a  philosopher — wrote  some 
stirring  songs. 

Nearly  all  the  theologians  were  poets.  They  opposed 
the  arms  of  imagination  to  the  advancing  regiment  of 


336     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

science.  Keble  wrote  The  Christian  Year,  Newman 
The  Dream  of  Gerontius,  Kingsley  '  Be  good,  sweet 
maid ',  and  a  score  of  charming  lyrics  in  hexameters 
and  other  metres.  Among  writers  moved  by  a  like 
impulse,  or,  at  least,  ranged  on  the  same  side,  may  be 
placed  Philip  James  Bailey  (1806-92),  whose  Festus 
(a  variant  of  Faust)  was  a  long  poem — elongated  at 
intervals — in  the  epic  of  paradise  style.  Martin  Tupper, 
too  (1810-99) — if  twice-dead  fame  is  ever  to  be  sum- 
moned from  oblivion — ,  deserves  mention  in  this 
place  for  the  sake  of  his  Proverbial  Philosophy  (1838), 
since  turned  by  philosophy  to  a  proverb.  Besides 
these,  there  are  the  echo -voices,  among  whom  may  be 
named  Sir  Lewis  Morris  (1833-1907),  the  poetic  shadow 
of  Lord  Tennyson.  Charles  Jeremiah  Wells  (1798- 
1879)  was  the  friend  and  contemporary  of  Keats,  and 
wrote  poetry  which  has  recently  withstood  the  perils 
of  enthusiastic  revival.  Another  name  which  emerges 
from  the  shadows  is  that  of  Adelaide  Anne  Procter 
(1825-64),  Bryan  Procter's  daughter,  a  pleasant  writer 
of  '  souvenir '  poems,  sometimes  rising  above  their 
class  ;  and  Lord  de  Tabley  (Leicester  Warren,  1835-95), 
Lord  Lytton  ('Owen  Meredith',  1831-92),  whose 
name  has  been  mentioned  before,  Gerald  Massey, 
Philip  Bourke  Marston,  Roden  Noel,  Francis  Turner 
Palgrave,  anthologist,  and  others  enough,  would  claim 
longer  notice  among  the  poets,  if  this  were  a  history 
of  literature  instead  of  an  essay  in  criticism.  But  the 
bare  enumeration  of  names  will  not  add  to  appreciation 
otherwise  than  by  helping  us  to  recognize  the  exceptional 


THE  SANCTION  OF  BEAUTY  337 

fecundity  of  this  epoch,  still  expressing  itself  in  poetry- 
through  such  artists  as  Mr.  Robert  Bridges,  Mr.  Stephen 
Phillips,  Mr.  Binyon,  Mr.  Trench,  Mr.  Yeats,  Mr. 
Watson,  and  others. 

The  last  word  in  the  present  section  belongs  to  the  Edward 
humourists.  Edward  Lear  (1812-88),  'Lewis  Carroll'  'Lewis 
(Charles  Lutwidge  Dodgson,  1833-98),  Frederic  Locker  ^^^"^^ '• 
(1821-95),  Charles  Stuart  Calverley  (1831-1884),  and, 
more  remotely,  Henry  DufE  Traill  (1842-1900)  and 
James  Kenneth  Stephen  (1859-92),  relieved  the  rigours 
of  the  highway  by  excursions  in  a  lighter  vein.  Lear's 
nonsense  verse,  especially,  and  Carroll's  adventures 
of  Alice  present  with  curious  distinctness  the  humour 
of  the  transcendental  point  of  view.  They  seemed  to 
say,  '  Come  and  live  in  this  world,  where  matter  is  a 
dissolving  dream  and  reality  is  behind  the  veil '.  Alice 
gets  behind  the  looking-glass,  and  finds  her  way  into 
the  wonderland.  The  serious  is  eliminated  from  their 
scheme,  and  the  inconsequence  delights  the  child  ;  but 
higher  than  the  child's  delight  is  that  of  the  eternal 
child  in  man  conscious  of  his  limitations.  The  impro- 
babilities of  the  senses  are  still  possibilities  of  reason, 
enlarged  to  the  capacity  of  the  imagination.  Even 
serious  writers  were  grotesque,  when  their  fancy  played 
among  abstractions.  Edward  Lear — and  Lewis  Carroll 
even  more — made  the  playthings  of  imagination  human, 
and  thus  completed  the  circle  of  Pre-Raphaelitism. 


22 


§  7.  THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY. 
i. 

Beauty    fT  ^^  characteristic  of  the  Northern  temper  never  to 

^^^  ,.      Jl    rest  wholly  s&,tisfied  with  the    contemplation  of 
morality.  ^    ^  v        ^       , 

beauty,     fcui  ourog  (JjIv  Dsuv  (^(og — '  This  is  the  life  of  the 

Gods  ',  declares  Plato  in  the  Phcedrus  myth,  but  the 

attribute  dips  deeper  into  Dante  than  into  Shakespeare. 

The  genius  of  EngUsh  art,  with  rare  exceptions,  has  been 

practical,  in  the  sense  of  aiming  at  transferring  the 

ideas  of  beauty  to  experience.     Its  practitioners  go 

up  into  the  mountain  and  come  down  with  the  light 

on  their  face,  but  they  bring  in  their  hands  the  two 

tables    of    stone,    inscribed    with    commandments   for 

observance,  or,  at  least,  with  the  fragments  of  such 

inscription.     Thus   Edmund   Spenser,   the   Rubens   of 

English  poetry,  aimed,  through  the  harmonies  of  his 

style  and  the  craft  of  its  elaborate  mechanism,  at  the 

same  truths  of  conduct  which  Shakespeare  vitalized  in  his 

plays,  and  Hooker  codified  in  his  treatise.     His  mood 

of  spiritual  uplifting  elevated  the  old  moralizings  about 

personified  virtues  and  the  seven  deadly  sins.     His 

strenuous  hate  of  evil  ennobled,  while  it  emboldened, 

the  passages  delineating  vice  ;    and  his  practical  aim 

was  defined  in  the  Preface  to  The  Faerie  Queene — 

added  at  Ralegh's  instance —  :    '  The  general  end  of 

338 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        339 

all  the  book  is  to  fashion  a  gentleman  or  noble  person 

in  virtuous  and  gentle  discipline.' 

If  this  aim  be  insinuated  through  the  windings  of 

Spenser's  melodious  stanzas,  it  would  be  superfluous 

to  dwell   on  the  disciplinary  intention  of   Milton,  or 

Wordsworth,   or  Carlyle,   or  of  Byron — a  Carlyle  in 

petto.     Shelley's  soul,  too,  though  it  wore  wings,  and 

soared  to  '  the  Plain  of  Truth  '  was  ardent  for  practice  ; 

and  in  fiction,   the   second  great   stream  which  has 

flowed  into  English  literature,  there  is  hardly  a  novel 

in  the  language  which  was  not  written  with  a  purpose. 

The   eighteenth    century  emphasized    this    tendency. 

Pope  disclaimed  the  '  microscopic  eye, '  and  forwent  the 

'  winged  mind  '  of  the  philosopher.     It  was  John  Keats 

'  ramping '  through  fairyland,  without  regard  to  the 

morals  of  the  fairies,  who  led  the  great  reaction  to 

beauty  for  beauty's  sake.    His  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn, 

'  all  breathing  human  passion  far  above ',   with  its 

magnificent  conclusion, 

'Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty' — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know, 

is  the  purest  English  statement  of  this  creed.  Keats, 
as  we  saw,  began  to  compromise  it — in  his  re-cast  of 
Hyperion — before  death  completed  his  vision  ;  but 
Rossetti  (and  Tennyson  of  Shalott)  founded  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  Brotherhood  on  the  essential  basis  of  that 
creed.  Rossetti  maintained  its  principles  with  an 
artistic  consistency  less  than  fully  English  in  one 
aspect,  more  than  merely  English  in  another.  His 
couplet,  which  we  have  followed  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson 


340     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

{Rossetti,  '  English  Men  of  Letters ',  p.  129)  in  selecting 

as  typical  of  his  philosophy, 

Whose  speech  Truth  knows  not  from  her  thought, 
Nor  Love  her  body  from  her  soul, 

is  composed  in  the  spirit  of  Plato's  '  lover ',  descended 
through  Italy  and  Keats.  The  rest  of  the  brethren 
kept  faith  in  various  degrees.  Happily,  the  invidious 
distribution  belongs  to  art  rather  than  to  literature. 
In  literature,  as  we  have  seen,  the  line  of  descent,  say, 
from  Milton,  is  through  Wordsworth  to  Robert  Browning 
and  George  Meredith,  and,  less  resolutely,  to  Tennyson. 
Among  Rossetti's  more  intimate  friends,  William 
Morris  sought  to  beautify  objects,  and  Swinburne  to 
objectify  beauty.  In  other  hands,  as  we  shall  see  in 
the  next  section,  beauty  became  a  symbol,  not  a  trust, 
and  was  sought  not  so  much  for  its  gifts  as  for  the 
sake  of  the  travail  of  seeking  it.  Hence,  as  a  technical 
point,  the  ode  of  aspiring  enthusiasm  replaced — or 
tended  to  replace — ,  in  the  poems  of  these  writers, 
the  simpler  forms  of  lyrical  outpouring. 
John  Meanwhile,  of  beauty  turned  to  use,  a  more  conscious 
"*  "*  moralist  than  Morris  was  John  Ruskin  (1819-1900), 
his  senior  by  about  fifteen  years.  The  seniority  is 
important,  for  when,  after  1848,  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood  had  been  constituted,  Ruskin  descended 
on  the  young  men  in  the  self-chosen  guise  of  an  elder 
brother.  His  close  acquaintance  with  Rossetti  began 
about  1854,  and  it  bore — typically  enough — a  white 
flower  of  humanitarianism,  when  Rossetti  undertook 
to  teach  art  in  the  famous  Working  Men's  College,  of 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        341 

which  F.  D.  Maurice  was  then  principal.  Moreover, 
Ruskin  subsidized  Rossetti,  and,  though  he  proved  a 
difficult  Maecenas — '  You  are  a  conceited  monkey ', 
'  You  are  a  very  odd  creature  ',  are  among  the  phrases 
in  his  letters — ,  the  relationship,  while  it  lasted,  was  as 
useful  to  Rossetti  as  it  was  creditable  to  Ruskin. 
Their  friendship  drooped  after  1868.  William  Morris 
was  also  attracted  by  the  noble  pioneers  of  the  College 
who  gathered  round  Frederick  Maurice  in  the  days  of 
revolution  on  the  Continent,  and  who  tried  not  in  vain 
to  extract  from  that  seething  anarchical  idealism  ripe 
counsels  of  practice  to  prevent  the  evils  which  others 
sought  to  cure.  In  this  movement,  responsible  and 
serious,  and  allied,  as  we  have  seen,  with  Pre- 
Raphaelite  art  on  the  one  part  and  with  the  religious 
ferment  on  the  other — a  movement  subsequently 
associated  with  the  excellent  names  of  Arnold  Toynbee, 
Walter  Besant,  Quintin  Hogg,  Passmore  Edwardes, 
and  others ;  with  University  Extension  societies, 
girls'  high  schools,  and  similar  organizations  for  under- 
mining artificial  barriers  of  culture  and  education  ;  a 
movement  more  truly  socialistic  than  much  which  is 
misnamed  socialism ;  a  movement,  finally,  in  this 
context,  which  enters  literature  again  in  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells's  studies  of  Mr.  Lewisham  and  Kipps — John 
Ruskin,  throughout  his  active  life,  bore  a  noble  and  a 
useful  part.  George  Allen,  afterwards  his  pubHsher 
and,  incidentally,  his  business-manager,  was  among 
the  engravers  and  draughtsmen  whom  Ruskin  taught 
and  trained ;    and  the  principles  which  he  preached 


342     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

may  still  be  read  in  his  little  Elements  of  Dramng, 
Elements  of  Perspective,  etc. 
The  Later  on,  when  the  College  had  lost  the  bond  of  its 
period,  original  idea,  Ruskin's  social  idealism  was  devoted 
to  his  Company  or  Guild  of  St.  George,  first  mooted  in 
a  letter  (Fors  Clavigera,  v)  of  May,  1871.  Neither 
morally,  industrially,  nor  financially — though  the 
heir  to  about  £200,000  dispersed  his  substance  in  good 
works — ,  did  the  success  of  the  Guild  reward  the  faith 
and  genius  of  '  the  Master '.  His  apologists  compare 
it  with  the  success  of  the  teachings  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount — a  comparison  which,  if  admitted,  obviously 
stops  discussion.  On  the  whole,  the  comparison  is  not 
admissible.  Faith  and  genius  Ruskin  possessed,  but 
the  faith  was  marred  by  egomania  and  the  genius  was 
crossed  with  quixotism.  He  was  rarely  spectator  ah 
extra.  Most  commonly,  he  viewed  mankind  and  its 
multifarious  institutions  as  a  circle  with  John  Ruskin 
at  the  centre.  The  encyclopaedic  character  of  his 
schemes  was  too  ambitious  for  effectiveness.  It  has 
been  said  that  '  Fors  was  Ruskin's  Hamlet '  (Frederic 
Harrison's  John  Ruskin,  '  English  Men  of  Letters ', 
p.  182),  in  the  sense — presumably,  and  more  accur- 
ately— ,  not  that  Ruskin  was  the  Shakespeare  of  Fors, 
but  that  he  was  the  Hamlet  of  his  own  drama,  enacted 
in  ninety-six  letters  between  1871  and  1884,  and  revised, 
with  '  cuts ',  in  1896.  Even  this  comparison  is  too 
favourable  ;  for,  whether  or  not  Hamlet  was  mad, 
there  is,  unfortunately,  no  doubt,  not  that  Ruskin 
was  mad,  though  his  mind  was  at  times  (not  necessarily 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        343 

at  productive  times)  diseased,  but  that  he  exceeded  in 
Fors  Clavigera,  which  .dealt  with  matters  of  real  moment 
to  the  audience  he  addressed,  the  legitimate  bounds 
of  irony,  obliquity,  inconsequence,  quiddity,  wayward- 
ness, self-licence,  allusiveness,  Puck-likeness  and  in- 
souciance ;  and  that  his  indulgence  in  these  humours, 
so  wholly  delightful  in  his  familiar  correspondence, 
bewrayed  the  cause  he  had  at  heart. 

His  sincerity — the  sincerity  of  his  zeal — ,  like  that  The 
of  most  prophets  and  martyrs,  is  not  to  be  measured  ^riocf 
by  his  success.  His  sacrifice  of  fortune  on  dependants, 
almoners,  pensioners,  and,  above  all,  on  ideas — 
an  angel  with  a  revenue  would,  perhaps,  not  ineptly 
describe  him  in  some  of  his  social  activities — ,  seemed 
to  Ruskin  the  least  notable  and  most  obvious  ex- 
pression of  his  creed.  As  is  inevitable  when  such 
spending  is  undertaken  personally,  and  not  confided 
to  trustees,  an  individual  element  entered  into  it.  A 
business-man  spies  imperfections  in  these  day-dreams 
floated  with  gold.  Romance  flies  out  at  the  window 
when  money  comes  in  at  the  door.  This  may  be  a 
fault  of  humanity,  a  flaw  in  the  composition  of  our 
nature,  but  there  is  an  inherent  dislike  to  see  expensive 
experiments  fail  at  the  initiative  of  one  man,  even 
though  he  bear  the  expense.  Moreover,  the  cumber- 
some method  by  which  Ruskin  came  to  his  own  rescue, 
and  supplied  by  the  income  from  his  books  the  loss  of 
income  from  investments,  though  a  certain  quasi-royal 
prestige  attached  to  the  printing-press  at  Orpington, 
is  not  as  impressive  as  it  should  be.     But  these  matters 


344     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

hardly  concern  criticism,  save  as  they  illustrate  his 
writings.  Ruskin's  style  would  plainly  be  affected 
by  these  generous  and  grandiose  views,  as  was  the 
style  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  whom  Ruskin  fervently 
admired.  There  is  a  like  largeness  in  both  writers,  a 
like  sense  of  breadth  and  space,  of  the  latis  otia  fundis, 
though  Ruskin's  scholarship  and  taste  enabled  him 
to  build  on  these  foundations  more  coherently  ornate 
designs.  Sometimes,  his  scholarship  misled  him.  He 
was  liable  to  be  the  slave  of  words,  or,  more  strictly, 
of  philology.  Such  terms  as  '  value ',  '  wealth ',  '  rent ', 
'  interest ',  and  so  forth,  he  was  fond  of  driving  into 
philological  comers  and  belabouring  with  petidant 
pedantry.  The  schoolmaster  sought  to  be  the  governor 
in  the  new  Ruskinian  republic.  But  these  lapses  from 
the  perfect  marriage  of  the  idealist  with  the  writer 
detract  hardly  at  all  from  the  splendour  of  his  style, 
especially  in  his  earlier  books.  Before  examining  these, 
however,  a  few  words  are  due  to  the  ideas  underlying 
Unto  this  Last  (1860  [1862]),  which,  with  Munera 
Pulveris  (1862  [1872])  ^,   stands,  as  it  were,  midway 

^  The  dates  in  square  brackets  refer  to  the  volume-publication 
in  each  instance.  Unto  this  Last  appeared  originally  in  The  Cornhill 
Magazine,  then  edited  by  Thackeray,  and  Munera  Pvlveris  (as 
Political  Economy)  in  Fraser^s,  then  edited  by  J.  A.  Froude.  Both 
Thackeray  and  Froude  suspended  the  serial  publication,  owing 
to  their  readers'  opposition.  Munera  Pulveris  in  book-form  was 
appropriately  dedicated  to  Carlyle,  whose  Sartor  Resartus  had 
similarly  appeared  in  Eraser's,  to  the  great  credit  of  its  editor  and 
the  no  less  great  bewilderment  of  its  readers.  Here,  perhaps, 
it  may  be  added  that  the  definitive  edition  of  Ruskin  is  that 
edited  by  Messrs.  E.  T.  Cook  and  A.  Wedderburn,  and  published  in 
luxurious  volumes   by    the  firm   of   George  Allen   and   Sons,  who 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        345 

between  Ruskin,  the  art-critic  of  Modern  Painters, 
and  Ruskin,  the  social  prophet  of  Fors  Clavigera. 

As  is  so  often  the  case  with  nineteenth-century  Capital 
thought,  its  obscurer  issues  are  illumined  by  their  Labour 
reflection  in  fiction  ;  and  we  may  seek  the  aid  of  a 
novelist  to  illumine  what  seemed  so  obscure  to  Rusldn's 
audience  in  1860.  What  was  the  secret  of  the 
popularity,  now  plainly  on  the  wane,  of  John  Halifax, 
Gentleman  (1857),  by  Mrs.  Craik  (1826-87)?  John 
was  a  ragged  lad,  who  was  taken  into  a  manufacturer's 
employment,  and  who  worked  his  way  up  through 
various  stages  of  promotion  to  the  headship  of  the 
business,  which  he  conscientiously  administered  on  the 
highest  principles  of  a  master  towards  his  men.  He 
married,  socially,  above  his  class,  and  won  his  wife's 
equal  love.  He  brought  up  his  family  with  due  respect 
to  his  own  origin  and  to  their  prospects  ;  neither  honey- 
ing at  the  whisper  of  a  lord,  nor  condescending  too 
willingly  to  a  governess.  A  glow  of  sentiment  was 
diffused  from  a  blind  daughter,  obviously  born  to  die 
young ;  and  the  narrator,  a  hero-worshipper,  the  lame 
son  of  the  old  master,  always  leaned  on  John's  strength. 
Such,  in  bare  outline,  is  the  story,  which,  though  well- 
written  and  consistently  worked-out,  would  never  have 
taken  its  place  as  an  English  classic  if  its  hero  had  not 
been  a  type.     John  Halifax  is,  preeminently  the  type 

continue  the  tradition  of  its  founder,  the  late  Mr.  Allen,  Ruskin's 
original  publisher.  The  bibliography  of  Ruskin  is  interesting,  for 
he  altered  much  that  he  had  written,  not  always  for  the  better. 
A  complete  account  has  been  compiled  by  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise  and  Mr. 
J.  P.  Smart. 


346  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  the  industrious  apprentice.  He  personified  the 
virtues  of  Capital.  He  was  the  breath  in  the  nostrils 
of  Individualism.  He  illustrated  by  example  the 
philosophy  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  He  might  have  been 
shown  behind  plate-glass  as  the  good  boy  of  the  Exhibi- 
tion of  1851.  He  might  have  stepped  in  his  artisan's 
clothes  straight  out  of  a  text  by  Dr.  Samuel  Smiles. 

Now,  it  was  precisely  to  the  destruction  of  this  type, 
to  its  utter  rending  and  confusion,  and  to  the  desecra- 
tion of  the  religion  thus  devoted  to  its  worship,  that 
Ruskin  consciously  directed  his  new  political  economy. 
We  know  to-day  that  he  was  right.  How  right,  we 
still  do  not  know  ^.  But '  the  modern  soi-disant  science 
of  political  economy,  based  on  the  idea  that  an  ad- 
vantageous code  of  social  action  may  be  determined 
irrespectively  of  the  influence  of  social  affection  '  ( Unto 
this  Last,  i.),  is  no  longer  to  be  reckoned  among  the 
'most  curious  and  least  creditable  delusions  of  large 
masses  of  the  human  race '.  With  the  historical 
overthrow  of  this  creed  we  are  not  here  concerned. 
The  reconstruction  of  society  on  a  surer  basis  is 
the  problem  of  the  twentieth  century,  to  be  solved 
now  or  hereafter.  Ruskin  fulminated,  divagated, 
exaggerated.  He  was  in  places  too  simple  and 
unworldly,  and  in  places  too  prone  to  sophistication. 

^  Mr.  John  Galsworthy's  inconclusive  drama,  Strife,  produced  in 
1909,  emphasizes  this  remark.  An  instructive  comparison  might 
be  instituted,  in  connection  with  the  mirror  of  fiction  held  up  to 
Capital  and  Labour,  between  the  literal  idealism  of  John  Halifax, 
Gentleman,  and  the  romantic  realism  of  such  a  study  of  mid-Victorian 
commerce  as  the  first  part  of  The  Old  Wives'  Tales  by  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  (Chapman  &  Hall,  1909),  or,  indeed,  of  Mr.  Wells's  Kipps. 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        347 

But,  whenever  the  port  is  reached,  and  liberty  enlarges 
her  tent — her  holding,  as  Ruskin  would  remind  us — , 
and  it  is  recognized,  at  least  as  clearly  as  more  closely 
perfected  conditions  allow,  that  '  There  is  no  Wealth  but 
Life — Life,  including  all  its  powers  of  love,  of  joy,  and 
of  admiration'  {Unto  this  Last,  fin.),  then  the  Ruskin 
of  1860  to  1870  will  be  counted  as  a  vates  sacer,  an  in- 
spired father  of  lawgivers  to  be. 

Here,  then,  the  critic  of  literature  must  leave  Ruskin's  The 
social  ethics.  We  mount  yet  another  step  in  this  period, 
busy  writer's  career,  and  come  at  last  to  our  more 
proper  province  :  Modern  Painters  (five  volumes,  1843, 
1846,  1856 — two — ,  1860),  Seven  Lamps  of  Archi- 
tecture (1849),  and  Stones  of  Venice  (three  volumes, 
1851-53).  Ruskin  returned  to  art-studies  in  various 
series  of  lectures  delivered  in  later  life  as  Slade  Professor 
at  Oxford.  In  two  years — 1865  and  1866 — he  pub- 
lished three  little  books.  Sesame  and  Lilies,  The  Crown 
of  Wild  Olive,  and  The  Ethics  of  the  Dust  ^,  all  of  which 
lie  in  the  region  between  ethics  and  art,  and  the  first 
of  which  is  particularly  noble-mannered.  His  Prceterita, 
or  reminiscences — unfinished — concluded  his  long  list 
of  writings.  But  the  art-studies  of  his  first  period 
display  his  literary  gifts  at  their  strongest  and  their 
best.  It  is  from  these  that  he  derives  his  fame  as  a 
master  of  English  prose,  the  successor,  in  thought 
through  Carlyle  and  in  style  through  De  Quincey,  to  the 

1  This  title — the  book  dealt  partly  with  crystals — has  no  relation 
to  the  more  far-fetched  title  of  Munera  Pulveris  (Horace,  Odes, 
L  28).  Ruskin's  titles  are  characteristically  fanciful,  like  that  of 
Carlyle's  Sartor  Besarlu*. 


348  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

writers  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was  the  paintings 
of  J.  M.  W.  Turner  (see  p.  154,  supra),  and  the  loyalty 
of  a  fellow-artist  in  the  face  of  a  neglectful  generation, 
which  inspired  the  five  volumes  of  Modern  Painters, 
written,  as  Ruskin  says,  neither  for  fame,  nor  for 
money,  nor  for  conscience'  sake,  '  but  of  necessity.  .  .  . 
I  saw  an  injustice  done,  and  tried  to  remedy  it.  I 
heard  falsehood  taught,  and  was  compelled  to  deny 
it '.  So  Modern  Painters  takes  its  place  as  one  of  the 
monuments  to  justice  and  truth  raised  by  Englishmen 
in  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  a  charter  of  liberty, 
a  State-paper,  among  the  archives,  of  the  liberation  of 
beauty  from  the  conventions  of  mistaken  schools. 
Ruskin,  like  a  new  Perseus,  rescued  art  from  its 
oppressors. 
Ru=;kin'8  And  now  take  an  example  of  his  style.  Read — it 
is  too  long  for  quotation — §§  35  to  38  (the  last)  of 
Part  II.  section  iii.  chapter  iv.  of  the  first  volume 
of  Modern  Painters.  The  general  subject  is  the  '  Truth 
of  Skies  ' ;  chapter  i.  is  '  of  the  open  sky  ',  chapter  ii.  is 
'  of  the  region  of  the  cirrus  ',  chapter  iii.,  'of  the 
central  cloud  region  ',  and  chapter  iv.  (the  present), 
'  of  the  region  of  the  rain-cloud '.  The  conclusion  is 
'  that  the  old  masters  attempted  the  representation  of 
only  one  among  the  thousands  of  their  systems  of 
scenery,  and  were  altogether  false  in  the  little  they 
attempted '.  Then  Ruskin  lifts  up  his  voice  like  a 
prophet  of  old,  fusing  traditional  Hebraism  with 
traditional  Hellenism,  as  Milton  had  fused  them  before 
him,  as  Carlyle  was  fusing  them  in  his  day,  and  as 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        349 

they  must  ever  be  fused  for  complete  revelation. 
The  ancient  harmonies  are  revived,  and  the  diction  of 
the  translators  of  the  Bible.  The  sacred  fountains 
of  emotion  are  sought  in  their  unchanging  wellsprings  : 

Stand  upon  the  peak  of  some  isolated  mountain 
at  daybreak,  when  the  night  mists  first  rise  from  off 
the  plains  .  .  . 

— ^the  quiet  opening  to  splendour  recalls  the  simple 
nature-observation  where  Homer  and  the  Psalmist 
meet.  Ruskin's  burden,  '  Has  Claude  given  this  ?  ', 
interposed  between  the  strophic  clauses  of  this  ode  in 
prose,  assists,  rhetorically,  the  argument  to  rise  from 
height  to  height,  like  the  cumulative  stanzas  of  the 
Hymn  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni  by  Coleridge.  So  it 
climbs  from  strength  to  strength  to  '  the  sudden  rush 
of  the  awakened  wind ',  and  falls  with  the  sinking  sun 
'  till  the  large  white  circle  of  the  slow  moon  is  lifted 
up  among  the  barred  clouds,  step  by  step,  line  by 
line  ;  star  after  star  she  quenches  with  her  kindling 
light,  setting  in  their  stead  one  army  of  pale,  pene- 
trable, fleecy  wreaths  in  the  heaven,  to  give  light  upon 
the  earth,  which  move  together,  hand  in  hand,  company 
by  company,  troop  by  troop,  so  measured  in  their 
unity  of  motion,  that  the  whole  heaven  seems  to  roll 
with  them,  and  the  earth  to  reel  under  them.  Ask 
Claude,  or  his  brethren,  for  that '.  And,  last,  the 
ohbligato  thanksgiving  to  '  the  Maker  and  Doer  of 
this ' — ('  Earth,  with  her  thousand  voices,  praises 
God ')  :  — once  more,  we  have  Meredith's  message  of 


350  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  '  half -strangeness  '  of  Earth,  edged  with  the  wonder 
of  the  vision  of  design. 

Another  passage,  more  obviously  Carlylean,  may 
be  quoted  in  extenso.  It  is  from  §  23  of  Part  IX. 
chapter  ix.  of  the  fifth  volume  : 

Look  on  the  map  of  Europe,  and  count  the  blood- 
stains upon  it,  between  Areola  and  Waterloo.  Not 
alone  those  blood-stains  on  the  Alpine  snow,  and  the 
blue  of  the  Lombard  plain.  The  English  death  was 
before  his  eyes  also.  No  decent,  calculable,  consoled 
dying  ;  no  passing  to  rest  like  that  of  the  aged  burghers 
of  Nuremburg  town.  No  gentle  processions  to  church- 
yards among  the  fields,  the  bronze  crests  bossed  deep 
on  the  memorial  tablets,  and  the  skylark  singing  above 
them  from  among  the  corn.  But  the  Hfe  trampled 
out  in  the  slime  of  the  street,  crushed  to  dust  amidst 
the  roaring  of  the  wheel,  tossed  countlessly  away  into 
howling  winter  wind  along  five  hundred  leagues  of 
rock-fanged  shore.  Or,  worst  of  all,  rotted  down  to 
forgotten  graves  through  years  of  ignorant  patience, 
and  vain  seeking  for  help  from  man,  for  hope  in  God — 
infirm,  imperfect  yearning,  as  of  motherless  infants 
starving  at  the  dawn  ;  oppressed  royalties  of  captive 
thought,  vague  ague-fits  of  bleak,  amazed  despair. 

This  is  the  summit  of  suggestive  narration.  The 
descriptive  faculty  employed  in  the  cloud-pictures 
above — and  too  rarely  attempted  in  English  prose — 
is  combined  with  an  eclectic  method  to  a  kind  of 
literary  impressionism,  capable  of  abysmal  degradation, 
when  proportion  and  dignity  are  sacrificed  to  effects 
of  shock  and  surprise,   but  maintained  here  on  the 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        351 

Attic  plane  between  over-emphasis  and  under-state - 
ment.  The  significant  words  are  '  blood-stains ',  graphi- 
cally depicted  on  the  map,  and  imaginatively  sum- 
marizing particular  records  of  places  and  times  ;  '  the 
English  death  ',  as  a  noun  of  number,  more  impressive 
than  the  details  it  interns  ;  the  sudden  homeliness  of 
the  skylark ;  the  '  life  .  .  .  tossed  countlessly  away ', 
and  '  rotted  down  to  forgotten  graves ',  with  that 
iterated,  terrible  neuter  plural ;  the  naked  imagery 
of  '  motherless  infants  starving  at  the  dawn  ' — each 
word  a  negation  of  rights,  except  the  last,  which  denotes 
a  common  right ;  and  the  adult  horror  of  full-grown 
sentiency,  expressible,  therefore,  ore  rotundo,  in  the 
richly-dight  phrase,  '  oppressed  royalties  of  captive 
thought '.  The  epithets,  too,  are  to  be  noted,  for 
Ruskin,  like  Patmore  and  Pater,  to  whom  we  shall 
come  in  the  next  section,  sought,  his  adjectives  with 
delicate  perception,  and  chose  those  with  a  nimbus 
beyond  their  edges.  '  Decent,  calculable,  consoled ' 
is  more  than  a  description  in  three  words  ;  it  opens 
out  into  an  endless  picture  of  cottage  interiors  on  the 
countryside,  with  the  whole  experience  of  their  inhabit- 
ants, and  the  peaceful  close  of  not  unworthy  lives. 
Such  magic  in  language  is  to  become  a  familiar  feature 
of  English  prose,  and  is  connected  with  the  de- 
velopment of  psychology  as  a  special  department  of 
knowledge. 


352     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 


Ruskin's  criticism  of  life  was  deduced  from  the  art 
of  painting,  Matthew  Arnold's  from  the  art  of  poetry. 
We  might  even  go  further,  and  say  that  Wordsworth, 
particularly,  was  Matthew  Arnold's  Turner.  And  as, 
from  first  to  last,  the  poets  are  nearer  than  the  painters 
to  the  expression  of  the  English  soul,  so  Arnold's 
criticism  of  life  came  nearer  to  English  consciousness 
than  Ruskin's. 
Matthew  Bom  in  1822,  the  son  of  Thomas  Arnold,  of  Rugby, 
(1^2-  Matthew  Arnold  lived  till  1888,  thus  belonging  by 
1888).  birth  and  time  to  the  group  of  strenuous  workers  who 
contributed  to  the  liberalizing  tendency  in  English 
life  and  thought.  He  became  a  Fellow  of  Oriel  in 
1845,  and  an  Inspector  of  Schools  in  1851.  In  1857 
he  was  appointed  to  the  Chair  of  Poetry  at  Oxford, 
and  delivered  courses  of  lectures  on  Celtic  Literature 
and  On  Translating  Homer.  His  work  for  the  Board 
of  Education  (then  a  department  of  the  Privy  Council) 
led  to  one  or  two  books,  A  French  Eton  among  them, 
which  are  like  oases  in  a  wilderness  of  blue-books,  and 
for  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  he  engaged  in  a 
crusade  for  '  sweetness  and  light ' — Swift's  phrase, 
which  he  made  his  own — in  social  relations  and  in 
intellectual  habit.  He  conducted  this  crusade  through 
written  essays  in  the  criticism  of  Literature  and  life. 
The  Essays  in  Criticism  proper  were  collected  in  two 
series  (1865  and  1888).  Culture  and  Anarchy  (1869) 
had  as  sub-title   '  an  Essay  in   Political   and  Social 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        353 

Criticism ',  and  Literature  and  Dogma  (1873),  with  its 
sequel  God  and  the  Bible,  was  '  an  Essay  towards 
a  better  Apprehension  of  the  Bible '.  Besides 
these,  there  were  one  or  two  volumes  of  more  mis- 
cellaneous papers,  and  his  Letters,  posthumously- 
published  ^. 

This  account  of  Arnold's  life  and  writings  has  omitted 
the  part  of  his  work  which  the  late  Dr.  Richard  Garnett 
{Dictionary  of  National  Biography)  considered  to  be 
the  most  abiding.  In  1849  and,  again,  in  1852,  a 
certain  'A.' — otherwise  anonymous — issued  volumes 
of  poetry,  the  bulk  of  the  contents  of  which  were 
included  in  Poems  (1853),  by  Matthew  Arnold.  The  two 
earlier  volumes  were  withdrawn  by  the  author  before 
many  copies  had  been  sold.  The  Poems  (1853)  were 
reprinted,  with  omissions  and  additions,  in  1854  and, 
again,  in  1857,  when  they  appeared  as  Poems,  First 
Series,  a  volume  of  Poems,  Second  Series,  having  appeared 
in  1855.  By  that  year,  when  Arnold  was  thirty- 
three,  the  whole  thing  was  practically  over.  There 
was  Merope  (1858),  which  languished  in  obscurity  till 
1885  ;  there  were  New  Poems  (1867),  which  included 
Empedocles  on  Etna,  revived  from  1852  at  the  instance 
of  Robert  Browning,  and  in  1869  and  subsequent  years 
there  were  collected  editions  of  the  poems,  with  in- 
significant  differences  in  their  contents.     But  for  all 


^  There  is  an  idiiion  de  luxe  of  Matthew  Arnold's  works  in  fifteen 
volumes  by  Macmillan  (1903),  who  publish  cheaper  editions  of  his 
poems,  his  letters,   and  his  Essays  in  Criticism.     Messrs.  Smith, 
Elder  &  Co.  have  popular  editions  of  his  other  writings. 
23 


354     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

purposes  except  the  bibliographer's,  Matthew  Arnold's 
career  as  a  poet  lasted  about  half  a  dozen  years.  He 
began  by  practising  the  art  which  he  went  on  to  criticize 
(as  professor  of  poetry  at  Oxford) ;  and  his  criticism 
widened  its  channel  to  take  in  religious  and  social 
problems. 
His  It    follows — ^indeed,    it    is    fundamental — that    his 

poe  ry.  p^g^-j.^.  ^-^j  j^^^  satisfy  himself.  He  was  seeking  some- 
thing which  he  did  not  find,  and,  faithfully  to  expecta- 
tion, the  sum-total,  intensively,  of  Arnold's  poetry — 
its  extent,  considering  how  occasional  was  the  manner 
of  its  production,  is  apt  to  come  as  a  surprise — is  a 
note  of  complaint  with  life.  The  essential  Arnold 
in  this  capacity  is  a  half-indignant,  half-querulous 
poet,  never  wholly  perfect  in  counsel,  who  cannot  see 
his  way  to  self-expression.  We  have  no  '  shelter  to 
grow  ripe  ',  no  '  leisure  to  grow  wise  '.  We  live  too 
fast,  and  are  harassed  too  much.  Our  age  is  a  '  hopeless 
tangle  '.  We  can  neither  enjoy,  when  we  will,  '  nor, 
when  we  will,  resign '  {Stanzas  in  Memory/  of  the  Author 
of  Obermann).  We  '  pursue  our  business  with  un- 
slackening  stride ',  and  '  glance,  and  nod,  and  bustle 
by,  And  never  once  possess  our  soul  Before  we  die  ' 
(A  Southern  Night).  This  is  his  plea  against  fate. 
It  recurs  with  variations  throughout  his  poems,  and, 
by  poetry  at  any  rate,  he  failed  to  find  a  way  out. 
The  height  of  his  aspiration  was  reached  in  such  poems 
as  A  Summer  Night  and  Kensington  Gardens,  where 
he  invokes  the  spirit  of  contrast  between  reality  and 
seeming  to  supply  what  is  missing  to  satisfaction  : 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        355 

Plairmess  and  clearness  without  shadow  or  stain  ! 

Clearness  divine  ! 

Ye  heavens,  whose  pure  dark  regions  have  no  sign 

Of  languor,  though  so  calm,  and,  though  so  great. 

Are  yet  untroubled  and  unpassionate ;  .  .  . 

I  will  not  say  that  your  mild  deeps  retain 

A  tinge,  it  may  be,  of  their  silent  pain 

Who  have  long'd  deeply  once,  and  long'd  in  vain. 

— Note  the  association  between  men's  restless  moods 
and  the  divine  clearness  which  resumes  them,  trans- 
ferred from  a  verbal  likeness  between  men's  deep 
longing  and  nature's  mild  deeps. — 

But  I  wiU  rather  say  that  you  remain 
A  world  above  man's  head,  to  let  him  see 
How  boundless  might  his  soul's  horizon  be. 
How  vast,  yet  of  what  clear  transparency. 

A  Summer  Night. 

And  again, 

Calm  soul  of  all  things  !  make  it  mine 
To  feel,  amid  the  city's  jar. 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  thine, 
Man  did  not  make,  and  cannot  mar. 

The  wiU  to  neither  strive  nor  cry. 
The  power  to  feel  with  others  give  ! 
Calm,  calm  me  more  !  nor  let  me  die 
Before  I  have  begun  to  live. 

Kensington  Gardens. 

And  again,  from  the  prayer  to  the  stars  in  Self- 
Dependence  : 

Ye  who  from  my  childhood  up  have  calm'd  me. 
Calm  me,  ah,  compose  me  to  the  end  !  .  .  . 
From  the  intense,  clear,  star-sown  vault  of  heaven. 
Over  the  Ut  sea's  unquiet  way, 


356     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

In  the  rustling  night-air  came  the  answer : 

'  Wouldst  thou  be  as  these  are  ?     Live  as  they'. 

But  tlie  stars  and  the  sea,  thus  immediately  apostro- 
phized, do  not  readily  transform  experience.  No 
'  wonder  edges  the  familiar  face ',  when  we  descend 
with  the  poet  to  the  plain.  The  charm  of  the  poetry 
is  obvious,  and  one  or  two  of  its  elements  may  be 
analysed.  There  is,  first,  the  scholarship  of  epithets  : 
*  intense,  clear,  star-sown  vault  of  heaven '  is  one 
instance  ;  '  the  unplumb'd,  salt,  estranging  sea  '  is 
another ;  '  that  wild,  unquench'd,  deep-sunken,  old- 
world  pain '  is  a  third.  They  beat  like  hammer- 
strokes  upon  the  literary  sense.  Akin  to  this  is  the 
felicity  of  phrase-making :  '  who  saw  life  steadily, 
and  saw  it  whole  ',  is  the  earliest  and  most  famous 
example.  Others  are  more  frankly  derivative,  and 
less  universal  in  their  origin  :  the  '  physician  of  the 
iron  age ',  '  Wordsworth's  healing  power ',  and  so 
forth,  indicate  the  direction  of  Arnold's  genius  towards 
brilliant  generalizations  in  criticism.  Again,  there  are 
traceable  certain  influences  in  Arnold's  poetry.  Words- 
worth's simplicity  of  faith  (and,  incidentally,  of  ex- 
pression) appealed  to  him  most  strongly,  though  it 
proved,  in  places,  incompatible  with  the  sensibility 
to  Attic  forms  by  which  Matthew  Arnold  was  always 
attracted.  In  Sohrab  and  Rustum  he  attempted  the 
Homeric  style  of  simile  and  metaphor  ;  Merope  and 
Emfedocles  are  Sophoclean  in  intention  ;  Tristram  and 
IseuU,  Balder  Dead,  and  the  Merman  pieces  owe  some- 
thing to  Tennyson  and  the  Pre-Raphaelites. 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        357 

The  clearest  note  struck  by  this  poet  is  gentle,  '  un- 
passionate  ',  and  elegiac.  The  Arthur  Clough  poems — 
The  Scholar-Gipsy  and  Thyrsis — ,  which  mingle  the 
magic  of  Oxford  with  the  memories  of  two  poets  ; 
Rughy  Chapel,  sacred  to  his  father  ;  the  Obermann 
stanzas  ;  A  Southern  Night ;  Memorial  Verses  ;  Heine^s 
Grave,  and  others  are  marked  by  literary  grace  of  an 
exceptional  degree  of  refinement,  and  by  elegances — 
the  old  word  is  the  best — of  metre  and  diction,  rising 
at  times  to  spontaneous  rapture.  Spontaneity  and 
genuine  sentiment,  true  harmonies  of  thought  and 
expression,  satisfying  and  complementary  to  each 
other,  mark,  first,  the  sonnet  on  Shakespeare,  and, 
secondly,  two  series  of  Arnold's  lyrics,  Switzerland 
and  Faded  Leaves.  These  include  about  a  dozen 
poems,  celebrating  an  unknown  '  Marguerite ',  and  in 
them  the  poetry  of  Matthew  Arnold  reaches  its  highest 
point.  He  was  often  in  love  with  love  ;  here  at  least 
he  became  a  lover.  There  is  a  certain  note  of  moral 
ecstasy,  not  very  easy  to  define,  but  fairly  obvious  to 
detect,  which  places  the  writer  of  these  poems  in  one 
line  of  succession  to  Wordsworth — in  the  same  line  as, 
in  a  later  day,  has  been  followed  by  Mr.  William  Watson, 
It  is  not  the  transcendental  Wordsworth,  opening  heaven 
on  earth ;  it  is  the  poet  of  elegy  and  reflection  of  whom 
we  are  instantly  put  in  mind  by  such  stanzas  as  the 
following  : 

How  sweet,  unreach'd  by  earthly  jars, 
My  sister  !  to  maintain  with  thee 
The  hush  among  the  shining  stars, 
The  calm  upon  the  moonlit  sea  ! 


358     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

— Note,  again,  the  uncompleted  transference  of  the 
idea  of  nature  to  the  needs  of  men — 

How  sweet  to  feel,  on  the  boon  air. 
All  our  unquiet  pulses  cease  ! 

— There  are  Keats  and  Shelley  in  this  couplet ;  see 
Stanza  6  of  the  Ode  to  a  Nightingale  and  Stanza  4, 
Written  in  Dejection  near  Naples. — 

To  feel  that  nothing  can  impair 

The  gentleness,  the  thirst  for  peace — 

The  gentleness  too  rudely  hurl'd 

On  this  wild  earth  of  hate  and  fear,  .  .  . 

And,  among  these  Switzerland  lyrics,  those  beginning 
'  Yes,  in  the  sea  of  life  enisled  ',  and  '  In  this  fair 
stranger's  eyes  of  grey',  and  'Vain  is  the  effort  to 
forget ',  display  in  a  rare  degree  the  marriage  of  deep 
feeling  with  perfect  speech. 

We  venture  to  hold  the  belief  that,  if  Matthew 
Arnold  had  obtained  from  the  muse  what  he  was 
always  asking — the  '  clear  prospect  o'er  our  being's 
whole  ',  the  '  will  like  a  dividing  spear  ',  the  '  calm  ', 
the  '  restoration  ',  and  the  '  durability  ' — ,  he  would 
have  continued  to  exercise  the  art  in  which  his  skill 
was  so  sure.  His  abandonment  of  poetry  is,  to  this 
belief,  a  sign  of  his  casting  about  for  a  means  of  ex- 
pression better  suited  to  his  gifts  ;  and,  though  it  may 
be  urged  that  he  was  mistaken,  it  is,  perhaps,  juster 
to  assume  that  his  thirty  years'  life  with  Leah  represent 
his  genius  more  truly  than  his  seven  years'  service  to 
Rachel.  But,  before  passing  from  the  poet  to  the 
critic,  one  detail  of  style  should  be  noted,  not  merely 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        359 

for  its  teclinical  success,  but  because  it  is  so  cbaracter- 
istic  of  the  writer.  Again  and  again  he  affects  such 
forms  of  expression  as  the  following  : 

Distracted  as  a  homeless  wind, 

In  beating  what  we  must  not  pass, 

In  seeking  what  we  shall  not  find. 

A  Farewell. 

The  type  touches  its  ideal  in  the  twin  lines  from  The 

Scholar-Gipsy, 

Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope. 
Still  clutching  the  ioviolable  shade, 

and,  whatever  name  grammarians  give  the  figure, 
Matthew  Arnold's  readers  recognize  it  as  a  sign  of  the 
iterative  mannerism  which  became  so  common  in  his 
prose. 

The  '  strange  disease  of  modern  life,  with  its  sick  Hla 
hurry,  its  divided  aims  ',  was,  as  we  have  noted,  a  ^or^g, 
common  complaint  in  the  poems.  The  poet,  qua  poet, 
failed  to  cure  it,  and  he  sought  a  remedy  in  prose. 
Matthew  Arnold  is  conspicuous  in  English  literature 
for  his  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  the  preface.  He  wrote 
prefaces  to  his  own  books,  and  prefaces  to  volumes  of 
selections  from  Wordsworth  and  other  writers.  The 
practice  has  since  been  killed  by  kindness,  and  readers 
(or  publishers)  are  reverting  to  the  texts  of  their  authors 
unadorned.  But  Arnold — like  Lamb  before  him — was 
undoubtedly  right  in  supporting  the  etiquette  of 
introduction.  '  The  remedy  is  at  hand  ',  he  seemed 
to  say,  '  but  you  are  not  competent  to  use  it.  Let 
me  dispose  you  correctly  to  receive  the  benefit  of  the 


36o     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

cure  '.  Carlyle's  dictum,  '  we  are  all  poets  when  we 
read  a  poem  well ',  and  Ruskin's  similar  warning  (in 
Sesame  and  Lilies),  that  a  reader  must  rise  to  his  author, 
the  author  will  not  stoop  to  him,  remind  us  that  good 
reading  is  in  the  nature  of  an  apprenticeship,  and  is  not 
a  self -developed  art.  Thus,  the  '  essays  in  criticism  ', 
introductory  to  enjoyment,  which  Matthew  Arnold 
interposed  between  Milton,  Gray,  Keats,  Shelley, 
Byron,  and  their  readers — the  '  Gray '  and  '  Words- 
worth '  are  the  best,  as  they  were  most  akin  to  Arnold's 
sympathies — ,  are  extraordinarily  helpful  to  apprecia- 
tion ;  and  the  more  general  papers  on  '  The  Study  of 
Poetry ',  '  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present 
Time ',  '  The  Literary  Influence  of  Academies ',  and  so 
forth,  are  full  of  acute  perception,  very  admirably 
expressed,  of  the  difference  between  reading  and  reading 
well,  in  the  sense  of  Carlyle's  aphorism.  They  were 
inquisitive,  exegetical  and  didactic,  differing  toto  ccelo 
from  the  personal  method  of  criticism  which  leaves  an 
author  to  reveal  himself  ;  and  thus,  as  special  studies, 
they  were  most  successful  when  they  dealt  with  a  mis- 
sionary writer,  such  as  Wordsworth.  They  aimed  at 
fashioning  an  intelligent  disposition,  at  creating  re- 
ceptivity and  pliability  of  mind  ;  and  they  insisted — 
with  the  mannered  iterativeness — on  certain  definite 
principles  of  taste.  Almost  without  deliberation,  they 
were  extended  from  reading  well  to  living  well.  There 
were  flaws  and  vices  in  the  age,  according  to  Arnold's 
diagnosis,  which  prevented  the  desirable  attitude  in 
the    patient's    disposition.    These    vices    were    most 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY        361 

readily  to  be  corrected  by  doses  of  Greek  and  French 
culture  ;  and  the  Uterary  critic  gave  way  in  turn  to 
the  rationalist  (or  simplifier)  in  popular  philosophy. 

This  phase,  founded  on  a  sound  distinction,  pre- 
current  in  the  essays,  between  truths  of  science  and  of 
rehgion,  is  to-day  the  least  interesting  in  Matthew 
Arnold.  But  in  his  own  day  of  controversial  theology, 
he  imported  into  the  discussion  a  refreshing  indignation 
which  bore  him  triumphantly  through.  He  hated 
the  type  of  mind  which  he  called  '  Phihstine '  or 
'  common  ',  and,  in  seeking  to  awaken  imagination — a 
sense  of  proportion  in  things,  and  a  sense  of  the  other 
point  of  view — ,  Matthew  Arnold  rendered  a  real 
service  to  the  cause  of  mundane  morality.  He  taught 
criticism,  or  definiteness  of  view  ;  he  taught  culture, 
or  revolt  against  bad  taste  ;  and  he  taught  imagination, 
or  rebellion  against  the  tyranny  of  facts.  These 
three  ideas  he  deemed  requisite  for  salvation,  social  and 
political  alike.  To  these  three  he  dedicated  his  talents, 
relinquishing  for  their  sake  the  attractive  allurements 
of  the  muse,  and  consenting  to  jostle  in  the  throng 
with  '  Mr.  Murphy ',  the  '  young  lions ',  and  other 
offences  to  fastidiousness. 

Fastidious,  trivial,  dogmatic,  too  harsh  and  too 
precise  he  may  have  been  in  his  attacks,  concerted  or 
occasional,  upon  Phihstia  in  England.  But  he  wrote 
some  passages  of  prose,  and  invented  some  definitions 
of  first  principles,  which  have  won  him  the  undivided 
title  of  the  leading  English  critic  of  the  nineteenth 
century.    Though  but  three  years  younger  than  John 


362     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Ruskin,  lie  seems  much  more  modern  than  that  master. 
He  was  certainly  much  more  free  from  obvious  sins 
of  individualism.  He  came  as  near  to  a  system  of 
criticism — to  a  science  of  the  art — as  any  English 
writer  has  ever  come.  He  was  urgent,  hopefully 
urgent,  about  the  comparative  method.  His  dictum, 
'  The  criticism  which  alone  can  much  help  us  for  the 
future  is  a  criticism  which  regards  Europe  as  being, 
for  intellectual  and  spiritual  purposes,  one  great  con- 
federation, bound  to  a  joint  action,  and  working  to  a 
common  result ',  has  been  selected  by  Professor  Saints- 
bury  as  the  motto  for  his  Periods  of  European  Literature 
(12  vols.,  by  various  writers,  Blackwood),  and  in  his 
own  History  of  Criticism  (3  vols.,  Blackwood)  he  writes 
of  Arnold  in  the  following  terms  :  '  He  had  an  exacter 
knowledge  than  Dryden's  ;  the  fineness  of  his  judg- 
ment shows  finer  beside  Johnson's  bluntness  ;  he  could 
not  woolgather  like  Coleridge  ;  his  range  was  far  wider 
than  Lamb's  ;  his  scholarship  and  his  delicacy  alike 
give  him  an  advantage  over  Hazlitt.  Systematic 
without  being  hidebound  ;  well-read  (if  not  exactly 
learned)  without  pedantry ;  delicate  and  subtle, 
without  weakness  or  dilettanteism  ;  catholic  without 
eclecticism ;  enthusiastic  without  indiscriminateness, — 
Mr.  Arnold  is  one  of  the  best  and  most  precious  teachers 
on  his  own  side  '.  There  is  nothing  to  add  to  this 
eulogy,  except  to  remind  the  reader,  first,  of  Arnold's 
vivaciousness,  and,  secondly,  of  his  skill  in  devising 
catchwords.  The  '  grand  style  ',  '  provinciality ', 
'  sweetness   and   light ',    belong,   together   with   many 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY       363 

others,  to  the  vocabulary  of  criticism,   enriched  im- 
measurably by  Matthew  Arnold. 


m. 

Once  more,  and  always  more  clearly  as  the  conclusion  other 
of  this  book  draws  nearer,  we  must  be  content  to  ^"  ^^' 
indicate  the  scope,  without  pursuing  the  representatives, 
of  each  department  of  letters.  Among  those  who 
properly  claim  mention  in  a  study  of  this  kind  are 
Walter  Bagehot  (1826-77),  critic  and  economist.  Dr. 
John  Brown  (1810-82),  of  Horce  Suhsecivcs,  Sir  Arthur 
Helps  (1813-75),  of  Friends  in  Council,  William  Minto 
(1845-93),  George  Briniley(  1819-57),  John Forster(  1812- 
76),  and  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis  (1806-63).  Each 
of  these,  to  whom  might  be  added  Canon  Ainger,  among 
the  recent  dead.  Dr.  Gosse  and  Professor  Saintsbury 
among  the  Hving,  has  added  to  the  structure  of 
English  criticism  in  the  application  of  principles  to  taste. 

Here,  however,  in  concluding  the  present  section,  it  Charlotte 
seems  more  appropriate  to  note  the  work  of  a  novelist  °°^^' 
than  of  a  critic.  For  among  the  formative  influences 
which  affected  national  character  at  this  time, 
Charlotte  Yonge  (1823-1901)  certainly  established  a 
definite  place  and  name.  It  was  precisely  in  this 
deUberate  didacticism  that  she  differed  from  the 
greater  novelists — that  her  difference  and  her  inferiority 
both  lay.  And  it  was,  again,  precisely  through  this 
quality  that  her  work  joins  on  to  the  writings  of  Ruskin 
and  Matthew  Arnold,  as  one  of  the  steadying  forces — 


364     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  moral  standards — of  the  age.     The  Heir  of  Redcliffe, 

The  Daisy  Chain  and  Heartsease,  to  name  three  out  of  a 

long  list  of  novels,  were  in  operation  (the  term  is  quite 

suitable)  at  about  the  same  time — say,  roughly,  about 

1860 — at   which   Ruskin   was   teaching   domestic   art 

and  Matthew  Arnold  was  tilting  at  the  Philistines. 

They    belong  to   the   same    cycle   of   thought   which 

Charles  Kingsley  expressed  in  his  well-known  lines, 

Be  good,  sweet  maid,  and  let  who  will  be  clever, 
Do  noble  things,  not  dream  them,  all  day  long  ; 

the  same,  again,  which  Tennyson  had  exalted  to  an 
untenable  height  in  The  Princess  of  1847  ;  the  same, 
again,  if  another  witness,  a  nominis  umbra,  may  be 
summoned  without  calling  his  evidence,  which  is 
typified  by  the  title  of  a  book  on  The  Gentle  Life  by 
James  Hain  Friswell  (1825-78). 

Charlotte  Yonge  illustrates  well  the  weaker  and  less 
permanent  aspects  of  this  middle-Victorian  ideal. 
Its  goodness  tended  towards  goodiness  ;  and,  though 
there  is  very  much  less  of  the  '  namby-pamby  '  (or 
mawkish)  in  her  books  than  their  present  neglect 
suggests,  these  novels  certainly  point  to  the  speedy 
degeneration  of  the  type.  Ruskin  and  Arnold  read — 
or  tended  to  read — too  much  didactic  morality  into 
literature  and  art.  They  were  too  anxious  to  translate 
their  beauties  into  practical  counsels  of  conduct  for 
vernacular  use.  Emerson,  writing  on  Manners,  says 
that  '  lovers  should  guard  their  strangeness '.  The 
same  warning  appHes  to  sublimated  lovers  of  the  arts. 
Intimacy,  not  founded  on  deep  truth,  leads  impercep- 


THE  SANCTION  OF  MORALITY       365 

tibly  to  familiarity  ;  and  herein  we  see  the  degrada- 
tion of  the  Ruskinian  to  the  Charlotte  Yonge  type. 
Noble  conduct,  gentle  goodness,  became  too  easy  a 
quest,  and  the  artistic-moral  life  tended  to  tameness 
and  domesticity.  Curiously  enough,  the  most  purely 
domestic  poem  of  this  epoch,  Coventry  Patmore's 
Angel  in  the  House,  to  which  we  shall  come  in  the  next 
section,  smouldered  with  subdued  fires,  and  effectively 
'  guarded  the  strangeness '  of  the  hearths  which  it 
sang.  But  the  moral  version  of  the  search  for  beauty 
did  not  permanently  attain  the  Creek  ideal  of  philosophy 
without  softness. 

Arnold's  purpose  was  the  more  masculine  of  the 
two  :  '  I  too  have  long'd  for  trenchant  force,  And 
will  like  a  dividing  spear ',  but  he,  too,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  disposed  to  lament 

The  gentleness  too  rudely  hurl'd 
On  this  wild  earth  of  hate  and  fear, 

and  to  complain  of 

The  thirst  for  peace  a  raving  world 
Would  never  let  us  satiate  here. 

For,  turn  back  for  a  moment  to  p.  85.  Did  this 
'  peace  '  and  '  gentleness '  of  Matthew  Arnold,  or  their 
more  efEeminate  counterparts  in  John  Ruskin  and 
Charlotte  Yonge,  satisfy  the  desire  for  reconciliation 
between  the  '  external  world '  and  the  '  individual 
mind '  of  Wordsworth  ?  Consider  the  continuation  of 
this  message  in  George  Meredith's  most  Wordsworthian 
poem.  Earth  is  speaking  (in  Outer  and  Inner)  to  the 
perception  of  the  same  discord  : 


366     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Accept,  she  says ;  it  is  not  hard 

In  woods ;  but  she  in  towns 
Repeats,  accept ;  and  have  we  wept. 

And  have  we  quailed  with  fears. 
Or  shrunk  with  horrors, 

— '  the  thirst  for  peace  a  raving  world  would  never 

let  us  satiate  ' — 

sure  reward 
We  have  whom  knowledge  crowns ; 
Who  see  in  mould  the  rose  unfold, 
The  soul  through  blood  and  tears. 

Experience  transcendent  consoles  experience  com- 
plainant. The  outer  peace  and  the  inner  fear  are  at 
one.  The  world  is  composed  to  the  mind.  Not  Arthur's 
shattered  peace  in  Tennyson's  Passing  of  Arthur, 

And  all  whereon  I  lean'd  in  wife  and  friend 
Is  traitor  to  my  peace,  and  all  my  realm 
Reels  back  into  the  beast,  and  is  no  more ; 

not  the  patched-up  truce  of  1850,  so  melodiously 
celebrated  in  In  Memoriam ;  not  the  peace  of  wall- 
papers and  furniture,  and  the  decorative  gentlenesses 
of  moral  art :  not  these,  but  a  deeper  reconcilement, 
founded  more  firmly  on  what  is  real,  and  resting  on 
no  divorce  between  human  knowledge  and  heavenly 
wisdom,  on  no  antagonism  of  reason  and  belief,  but 
on  the  union  of  the  two  in  love.  An  express  and 
invincible  faith  in  the  truth  of  this  ultimate  harmony 
between  experience  and  design — the  seeming  '  hate  ' 
and  the  seeming  '  gentleness  ' — is  alone  competent  to 
still  the  querulous  cries  of  men.  Not  Ruskin,  not 
Matthew  Arnold,  for  all  their  energies. 


A 


§  8.  SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY. 


FIERCER  appetite  for  beauty — for  its  symbols  The  point 
rather  than  its  obligation — marks  the  writers 


of  the  last  phase  of  the  aesthetic  movement.  To  them 
it  mattered  not  at  all  (or  hardly  at  all)  that  the  times 
were  out  of  joint.  They  were  conscious  of  no  fate 
urging  them  to  set  things  right.  They  had  afl&nities 
with  all  the  rest :  with  the  letter-perfectness  of 
Tennyson,  the  domestic  idealism  of  Ruskin,  the  chaste 
socialism  of  Morris,  the  force  and  fire  of  Swinburne, 
the  psychological  mysticism  of  Meredith,  the  profane 
godliness  of  Rossetti,  the  holy  godliness  of  his  sister, 
the  moral  unrest  of  Matthew  Arnold  ;  even  with  the 
disappointed  glooms  of  Arthur  Clough  and  James 
Thomson.  But  they  differed  from  all  in  a  certain 
remoteness  from  the  centre  towards  which  those  writers 
were  striving. 

This  difference,  negative  in  origin,  is  difficult  to 
seize.  It  depends  on  various  conditions  of  biography, 
temperament  and  circumstances  which  it  would  take 
too  long  to  substantiate,  and  which  are,  after  all,  less 
important  than  their  obvious  results  in  the  writings 

bequeathed  to  us.    Their  common  object  was  enjoy- 

367 


368     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ment,  in  the  sense  of  a  complete  self-expression,  based 
partly,  if  not  wholly,  upon  physical  faculties,  though 
extended  thence  to  metaphysics.  An  accurate  rendering 
of  these  records  was  a  sacred  canon  of  their  art.  If 
the  revelation  proved  incommunicable,  they  preferred 
to  destroy  the  records  rather  than  to  leave  them 
imperfect.  Style,  which  seems  their  preoccupation, 
was  far  more  a  secondary  matter  than  it  was  with 
some  less  rapt  inquirers.  It  was  evolved  in  the  course 
of  their  endeavour  to  satisfy  the  appetite  for  joy. 
They  were  self-engrossed  in  contemplation.  They 
listened  intently  for  the  unheard,  and  gazed  intensely 
at  the  unseen.  The  exact  word  was  indispensable 
to  such  a  purpose,  and  the  exact  word  was  more  often 
than  not  a  term  of  indefiniteness  and  vagueness.  This 
gives  the  loftiness  to  their  style,  and  leads  to  its 
occasional  languor.  Further,  the  mood  perplexes 
criticism.  The  conclusions  of  these  writers  appeal  to  a 
partly  undeveloped  consciousness,  and  are  to  be  tested 
by  future  consent.  In  hands  less  clean  than  theirs, 
in  hearts  less  passionate,  and  with  motives  less  sincere, 
lay  the  danger  of  imperfect  rapture,  and  of  symbolizing 
for  impure  (because  insincere)  ends. 

Five  major  names  occur  in  this  context — Coventry 
Patmore,  Walter  Pater,  Francis  Thompson,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  Richard  JefEeries.  With  these 
are  joined  the  names  of  John  Addington  Symonds, 
Oscar  Wilde,  William  Ernest  Henley,  as  well  as  of 
others  still  at  work. 

Pater  and  Symonds  alike  made  special  studies  of 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  369 

the  Renaissance.     Pater's  Studies  of  its  history  was  Walter 

Pater 

published  in  1873,  and  Symonds's  history,  expanded  (1839- 
from  a  prize-essay  at  Oxford,  between  1875  and  1886.  i^^*)* 
The  mere  attraction  of  the  subject  is  significant,  in 
connection  with  the  Pre-Raphaehte  creed,  to  which 
Pater  gravitated  in  early  life  ;  but  more  significant 
is  the  point  of  view  from  which  Pater  dehberately  set 
out.  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  aphorisms  from 
his  Renaissance  volume  : 

The  service  of  philosophy  towards  the  human  spirit 
is  to  rouse,  to  startle  it  to  a  life  of  constant  and  eager 
observation.  ...  To  burn  always  with  this  hard, 
gem-like  flame,  to  maintain  this  ecstasy,  is  success  in 
life. 

Again  : 

We  are  all  condamnes,  as  Victor  Hugo  says  :  we 
are  all  under  sentence  of  death  but  with  a  sort  of 
indefinite  reprieve  :  we  have  an  interval,  and  then 
our  place  knows  us  no  more.  .  .  .  Our  one  chance  lies 
in  expanding  that  interval,  in  getting  as  many  pulsa- 
tions as  possible  into  the  given  time.  ...  Of  such 
wisdom,  the  poetic  passion,  the  desire  for  beauty,  the 
love  of  art  for  its  own  sake,  has  most. 

Again  : 

Not  the  fruit  of  experience,  but  experience  itself, 
is  the  end. 

And,  again  (from  the  Preface)  : 

The  function  of  the  aesthetic  critic  is  to  distinguish, 
to  analyse,  and  separate  from  its  adjuncts,  the  virtue 
24 


370     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

by  which  a  picture,  a  fair  personality  in  life  or  in  a  book, 
produces  this  special  impression  of  beauty  or  pleasure, 
to  indicate  what  the  source  of  that  impression  is,  and 
under  what  conditions  it  is  experienced. 

There  is,  as  Pater  himself  says,  '  a  kind  of  passionate 
coldness  '  in  this  attitude,  which  is  at  the  opposite 
extreme  to,  say,  Kingsley's  heats  of  idealism  or  Arnold's 
moralization  of  experience.  It  is  the  joy-search 
raised  to  an  exact  science,  and  insulated  from  all 
distracting  influences,  which  is  recommended  as 
'  our  one  chance ',  as  the  ultimate  object  of  all  criticism 
an(i  as  the  secret  of  '  success  in  life  '.  '  John  Halifax  ', 
amassing  capital,  and  ameliorating  the  conditions  of 
labour  ;  John  Ruskin,  ennobling  labour,  and  modify- 
ing the  tyranny  of  capital ;  altruism  itself,  and 
human  relations,  and  all  the  compromises  on  which 
social  hfe  is  founded — starting  with  the  great  com- 
promise of  sex — are  shrivelled  up  before  this  '  gem-like 
flame  ', 

Let  us  turn  to  these  exclusions  for  a  moment,  and 
particularly  to  the  exclusion  of  woman  from  the  paradise 
of  aesthetic  impressionism.  We  are  far  too  close  to  the 
shadow  of  the  actual  figures  of  these  men  to  discuss 
this  question  biographically.  Pater's  donnish  celibacy 
and  Wilde's  shipwreck  of  his  life  have  no  direct  interest 
for  literature.  But  this  at  least  may  be  said  by  the 
literary  critic,  that  in  the  works  of  no  one  of  these 
writers,  neither  in  Patmore,  nor  Pater,  nor  Thompson, 
nor  Stevenson,  nor  Jefieries,  nor  Syraonds,  nor  Wilde, 
nor  Henley,  nor  another,  does  the  splendid  selfishness 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  371 

compensate  for  the  problems  whicli  they  left  untouched, 

and  to  the  solution  of  which  the  novelists  had  been 

devoting    their    highest    talent.     It    is    the    reaction, 

perhaps,  which  has  added  weight  to  the  impetus  with 

which  writers  as  different  as  Mr.  Kipling,  Mr.  Wells, 

and  Mr.  Shaw,  have  returned  to  these  aspects.     And 

this  is  said  irrespectively  of  the  fact  that  the  key  to 

all  Patmore's  poetry  is   the   relation   of   husband  to 

wife,  and,   more    mystically,   of  lover   to  lover.     His 

idealization   is   so  complete  as   to   set   it  above   the 

human     plane.      Contrast    Meredith's    Modern    Love 

with  Patmore's  Angel  in  the  House — or,  rather,  with 

the  Preludes  of  that  poem — ,  and  our  statement  will 

be  justified. 

We  must  look  at  this  Patmore  note  more  closely.  Coventry 

Patmore 
In  one  aspect  it  approximates  to  Pater's.     Here,  for  (1823- 

instance,  is  an  expansion  of  the  '  interval ',  a  conscious 

recount  of  the  '  pulsations ' : 

Not  in  the  crises  of  events, 

Of  compass'd  hopes,  or  fears  fulfiU'd, 
Of  acts  of  gravest  consequence. 

Are  life's  dehght  and  depth  reveal'd. 
The  day  of  days  was  not  the  day ; 

That  went  before,  or  was  postponed ; 
The  night  Death  took  our  lamp  away 

Was  not  the  night  on  which  we  groan'd. 
I  drew  my  bride,  beneath  the  moon, 

Across  my  threshold ;  happy  hour  ! 
But,  ah,  the  walk  that  afternoon 

We  saw  the  water-flags  in  flower  ! 

And  here,  in  the  following  stanza  {The  Angel  in  the 
House,  canto  viii),  is  the  investiture  of  the  thought — 


372     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

already  purified  from  clinging  grossnesses  of  earth — with 
ethereal  raiment  : 

Lo,  there,  whence  love,  life,  light  are  pour'd 

Veil'd  with  impenetrable  rays. 
Amidst  the  presence  of  the  Lord 

Co-equal  Wisdom  laughs  and  plays. 
Female  and  male  God  made  the  man ; 

His  image  is  the  whole,  not  half ; 
And  in  our  love  we  dimly  scan 

The  love  which  is  between  Himself. 

Add  to  this  the  symbolism  of  the  later  Patmore — the 
Patmore  of  the  odes  which  are  pure  fire — ,  and  the 
growth  of  this  poet  in  '  a  kind  of  passionate  coldness ', 
an  austerity  transfiguring  desire,  will  partly  be  trace- 
able. Read  in  this  sense  '  A  Child's  Purchase  ',  or 
'  Delicise  Sapientise  de  Amore ',  or  '  Sponsa  Dei ' 
(afterwards  the  title  of  a  prose-work  which  he  destroyed), 
in  the  volume  called  The  Unknown  Eros. 

Who  is  this  Maiden  fair, 

The  laughing  of  whose  eye 

Is  in  man's  heart  renew'd  virginity  ? 

he  asks,  in  one  of  these  three  odes  ;  '  who  is  this  only 
happy  She,  whom,  by  a  frantic  flight  of  courtesy ', 
he  adores,  under  the  name  of  a  living  woman,  'as 
Margaret,  Maude,  or  Cecily  '  ? 

What  if  this  Lady  be  thy  Soul,  and  He 
Who  claims  to  enjoy  her  sacred  beauty  be, 
Not  thou,  but  God  ! 

This  tremendous  symbolism,  the  more  tremendous  for 
its  simplicity  of  statement  at  a  white  heat  of  sincerity, 
underlies  the  music  of  the  odes,  and  is  latent,  though  not 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  373 

explicit,   in  the  seeming  mildness — external  only — of 

The  Angel  in  the  House.    We  may  quote  from  another 

of  these  three  odes  : 

Love  makes  the  life  to  be 

A  fount  perpetual  of  virginity ; 

For,  lo,  the  Elect 

Of  generous  Love,  how  named  soe'er,  affect 

Nothing  but  God, 

Or  mediate  or  direct. 

Nothing  but  God, 

The  Husband  of  the  Heavens : 

And  who  Him  love,  in  potence  great  or  small. 

Are,  one  and  all. 

Heirs  of  the  Palace  glad. 

And  inly  clad 

With  the  bridal  robes  of  ardour  virginal. 

If  we  turn  back  to  Meredith's  Hymn  to  Colour  (p.  292, 
above)  we  find  a  trace  of  the  same  thought,  though 
without  Patmore's  religious  imagery — he  became  a 
convert  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church — ,  and  with  less 
voluptuousness  than  his  : 

Cleave  thou  thy  way  with  fathering  desire 

Of  fire  to  reach  to  fire. 
Look  now  where  Colour,  the  soul's  bridegroom,  makes 
The  house  of  heaven  splendid  for  the  bride. 
To  him  as  leaps  a  fountain  she  awakes, 
In  knotting  arms,  yet.  boundless :  him  beside, 
She  holds  the  flower  to  heaven,  and  by  his  power 

Brings  heaven  to  the  flower. 

It  is  found  again,  and  with  the  same  differences,  in  the 
same  poet's  Meditation  under  Stars  : 

Bethink  you  :  were  it  Earth  alone 
Breeds  love,  would  not  her  region  be 

The  sole  delight  and  throne 

Of  generous  Deity  ? 


374     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Transcendental  language  of  this  sort  — '  dead 
language  ',  as  Patmore  calls  it ;  unborn  language,  as 
we  should  prefer  to  call  it — should  be  '  decently 
cloaked ',  Patmore  says,  '  in  the  Imperial  tongue  of 
Rome  ',  and  it  is,  indeed,  sometimes,  not  less  obscure. 
It  is  language  which  is  either  understood  or  not.  It  is 
not  easily  to  be  taught.  Its  effect  does  not  reside  in 
combinations  of  consonants  and  vowels,  nor  in  con- 
ventions, nor  in  Crashaw-like  figures.  The  recurring 
reference  to  Richard  Crashaw,  and  the  example  of 
seventeenth-century  mysticism,  is,  in  fact,  a  little 
misleading.  There  was  more  white  passion  in  Patmore, 
especially  in  the  fifteen  years  of  silence  between  The 
Victories  of  Love  (in  the  vein  of  The  Angel  in  the  House) 
and  The  Unknown  Eros  of  1877.  This  language,  so 
curiously  unlike  all  associated  Victorian  conceptions,  is 
the  language  of  male  angels  discoursing  love,  '  tender- 
soft  as  seem  The  embraces  of  a  dead  love  in  a  dream ', 
and  yet  burning  with  an  unquenchable  flame.  It  is 
the  last  great  efEort  of  the  spirit,  emancipate  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  overleap  the  bounds  of  space 
and  time,  and  to  exist  as  a  naked  soul,  released  from 
the  thraldom  of  the  senses,  yet  winning  its  release 
through  pure  sense,  and  speaking  the  old  poetic  tongue. 
It  may  be  missed,  as  we  have  said,  or  understood ; 
there  is  no  middle  way  of  hearing  it ;  but  we  dwell  on 
its  magical  qualities,  its  remote  and  jewelled  perfection, 
because,  from  first  to  last,  it  is  the  voice  ot  free  cog- 
nition. 

It  evoked  strains  of  prose  style  wholly  different  from 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  375 

the  rhetoric  of  which  Macaulay  was  a  master,  and  Charac- 
different  in  kind  and  in  degree  from  the  bulk  of  Arnold  of  style. 
and  of  Ruskin.  There  are  sifted  passages  in  Ruskin 
which  have  affinities  with  Pater,  especially  in  Ruskin's 
chastened  moods  ;  but  the  moral  purpose  of  these 
critics  tempered  with  warmer  lights  the  marmoreal 
dignity  of  Pater.  Pater  commanded  an  eloquence  of 
prose  which,  when  a  poet  is  inspired  by  it,  moves  him 
to  use  the  form  of  ode,  the  most  exalted  of  the  lyrical 
measures.  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  passage 
from  the  Renaissance  volume,  as  a  touchstone  of 
Pateresqueness.  He  is  describing  Leonardo  Da  Vinci's 
'  Gioconda  '  : 

She  is  older  than  the  rocks  among  which  she  sits  ; 
like  the  vampire,  she  has  been  dead  many  times,  and 
learned  the  secrets  of  the  grave  ;  and  has  been  a  diver 
in  deep  seas,  and  keeps  their  fallen  day  about 
her ;  and  trafficked  for  strange  webs  with  Eastern 
merchants  ;  and,  as  Leda,  was  the  mother  of  Helen 
of  Troy,  and,  as  Saint  Anne,  the  mother  of  Mary  ; 
and  all  this  has  been  to  her  but  as  the  sound  of  lyres 
and  flutes,  and  lives  only  in  the  delicacy  with  which 
it  has  moulded  the  changing  lineaments,  and  tinged 
the  eyelids  and  the  hands. 

It  is  written  of  art  of  this  kind,  ars  est  celare  artem. 
These  unseizable,  yet  denominated,  apparencies,  as 
evanescent  '  as  the  sound  of  lyres  and  flutes ',  and  to 
be  inferred  only  from  changes  of  the  features,  and 
expressions  of  '  the  eyelids  and  the  hands  ',  are  endued 
with  origin  and  presence  by  the  power  of  imaginative 


376  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

language.  The  '  fallen  day '  of  the  deep  seas,  and  the 
'  strange  webs  '  of  Eastern  traffickers,  and  the  mother- 
hood of  Helen  and  of  Mary,  are  suggestions  thrown 
out  at  ideas — spars  of  language  to  support  them  ere 
they  sink  —  like  thoughts  that  have  broken  their 
vessels — ,  comparable,  if  to  anything  in  English 
literature,  then  to  rare  flashes  in  Coleridge  (see  p.  76, 
above)  who  '  on  honey-dew  hath  fed,  And  drunk  the 
milk  of  Paradise  '. 

One  high  power  of  style  supervenes,  replacing  much 
that  is  excluded  from  the  survey  of  these  apostles  of 
sensation,  and  this  is,  in  one  word,  discrimination,  or, 
more  precisely,  essentiality.  The  mere  fact  became 
a  symbol  of  true  being,  and  the  symbolized  fact  opened 
out  into  a  revelation  of  essential  truth,  uplifting  the 
fact  to  spiritual  communion.  Again  and  again  it 
occurs,  in  the  writings  of  Pater  and  Patmore,  and 
likewise  of  Richard  Jefferies, — this  faculty  of  selecting 
the  essential  detail,  and  of  merging  it,  by  a  master's 
choice  of  words,  in  the  complexus  of  relationships  to 
which  it  ultimately  belongs. 

A  few  examples  will  help  to  make  this  clearer  : 

His  mother  became  to  him  the  very  type  of  maternity 
in  things,  its  unfaiUng  pity  and  protectiveness. 

Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean. 

Here  is  manifest  the  same  faculty  as  in  Blake's 
'  Sweet  joy  I  call  thee  '.  The  mother  is  resumed  in 
pity,  as  the  infant  in  joy.     Again, 

Surely,  the  aim  of  a  true  philosophy  must  lie,  not 
in  futile  efforts  towards  the  complete  accommodation 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  377 

of  man  to  the  circumstances  in  which  he  chances  to 
find  himself,  but  in  the  maintenance  of  a  kind  of  candid 
discontent,  in  the  face  of  the  very  highest  achievement ; 
the  unclouded  and  receptive  soul  quitting  the  world 
finally,  with  the  same  fresh  wonder  with  which  it  had 
entered  the  world  still  unimpaired,  and  going  on  its 
blind  way  at  last  with  the  consciousness  of  some 
profound  enigma  in  things,  as  but  the  pledge  of  some- 
thing further  to  come.  ibid. 

This  passage  is  very  characteristic.  Note,  first,  the 
clarity  of  the  statement  of  that  very  difficult  quest, 
'  the  aim  of  a  true  philosophy '.  The  parsimony  of 
words  is  extraordinary,  considering  the  luminousness 
of  the  expression.  We  may  compare  it  with  the 
extract  of  essences  in  other  parts  of  Pater's  writings, 
such  as  his  description  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  :  '  The 
sudden  passage  from  lowly  thoughts  and  places  to  the 
majestic  forms  of  philosophical  imagination,  the  play 
of  these  forms  over  a  world  so  different,  enlarging  so 
strangely  the  bounds  of  its  humble  churchyards,  and 
breaking  such  a  wild  light  on  the  graves  of  christened 
children ' — where  the  difficult  idea  of  transcendentalism 
is  unsurpassably  expressed. 

Secondly,  note  in  the  Marius  sentences,  the  rare 
appearance  in  English  prose  of  particles  as  supple  as 
in  Attic  ;  especially  the  use  of  '  a  kind  of  ',  '  some  ', 
'  a  certain  ' — ,  the  enclitic  Tig  of  the  Greeks,  which 
Pater  made  his  own  : 

As  if  by  way  of  a  due  recognition  of  some  immeasurable 
divine  condescension  manifest  in  a  certain  historic  fact, 


378  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

its  influence  was  felt  more  especially  at  those  points 
which  demanded  some  sacrifice  of  one's  self,  for  the 
weak,  for  the  aged,  for  little  children,  and  even  for 
the  dead.  And  then,  for  its  constant  outward  token, 
its  significant  manner  or  index,  it  issued  in  a  certain 
debonair  grace,  and  a  certain  mystic  attractiveness, 
a  courtesy,  which  made  Marius  doubt  whether  that 
famed  Greek  '  blitheness  ',  or  gaiety,  or  grace,  in  the 
handling  of  hfe,  had  been,  after  all,  an  unrivalled 
success.  ibid. 

.  The  words  we  have  here  underlined  point  to  language 
employed  in  new  uses,  to  expression  sought  for  ideas 
which  have  no  exact  correspondence  in  words,  and  the 
recurring  confession  of  inadequacy  (seen  again  in  the 
variants  of  '  blitheness  ')  is  itself  a  token  of  the  precision 
with  which  these  empiricists  of  style  exhausted  the 
resources  at  their  disposal. 

Take,  for  instance,  The  Toys  of  Patmore,  with  its 
deeply  pathetic  enumeration  of  the  objects  which  the 
little  boy  had  put  within  his  reach,  '  to  comfort  his 
sad  heart '  : 

A  box  of  counters  and  a  red-vein'd  stone, 

A  piece  of  glass  abraded  by  the  beach 

And  six  or  seven  shells, 

A  bottle  with  bluebells 

And  two  French  copper  coins.  .  .  . 

How  exact  and  punctilious  is  the  art  thus  dealing 
with  tangible  things,  and  yet  neither  more  exact 
nor  more  punctilious  than  the  art  of  the  same  master 
applied  to  impalpable  essences  : 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  379 

So  when  that  night  I  pray'd 

To  God,  I  wept,  and  said — 

Ah,  when  at  last  we  he  with  trancdd  breath. 

Not  vexing  Thee  in  death. 

And  Thou  rememberest  of  what  toys 

We  made  our  joys. 

How  weakly  understood 

Thy  great  commanded  good. 

Then,  fatherly  not  less 

Than  I  whom  Thou  hast  moulded  from  the  clay. 

Thou' It  leave  Thy  wrath,  and  say, 

'  I  wiU  be  sorry  for  their  childishness '. 

These  writers — Patmore  and  Pater — must,  of  all 
others,  be  studied  solely  through  the  medium  of  their 
works,  or  of  such  extensive  quotation  from  them  as  the 
limits  of  this  volume  forbid.  They  aimed,  if  the  paradox 
be  permitted,  at  a  metaphysic  of  sensation,  at  realizing 
sensation  so  vividly  as  to  make  it  the  key  to  unlock 
the  deepest  delights  of  which  the  soul  is  capable. 
Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean  is  a  study  of  '  his  sensa- 
tions and  ideas ',  and  the  period  of  the  death  of 
Antoninus  was  chosen  for  its  special  appropriateness 
as  a  time  of  transitional  thought.  His  unfinished 
Gaston  de  Latour  was  again  a  study  of  solution,  afford- 
ing scope  for  the  powers  of  balance,  suspense  and 
equilibrium,  in  which  Pater  excelled.  Besides  these 
narrative  romances,  there  are  his  Renaissance  studies, 
his  Imaginary  Portraits,  his  Appreciations,  his  lectures 
on  Plato  and  Platonism,  his  Greek  Studies,  and  Essays 
from  the  Guardian.  Patmore's  works  have  been  specified. 
The  poems  of  earlier  life,  The  Angel  in  the  House  and 
The  Victories  of  Love,  prepared  the  way  for  the  deeper 


38o     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

mysticism  and  the  purer  flame  of  abstraction  in  the  odes 
which  compose  The  Unknown  Eros  of  his  maturity. 

John  Addington  Symonds  (1840-93)  must  here  be 
passed  over  as  an  essayist  in  Pater's  vein  ;  a  poet,  a 
scholar,  and  a  critic,  of  the  aesthetic  and  sensuous  school. 
And  several  causes  compel  us  to  almost  as  bare  a 
Francis  statement  of  the  name  and  fame  of  Francis  Thompson, 
(185™-?^  °  Patmore's  successor  in  his  own  kind.  It  is  not  that  his 
1907).  death  is  so  recent,  for  our  survey  has  included  living 
writers  ;  it  is  rather  that  his  writings  are  of  small 
bulk,  and  are  not  yet  sufficiently  familiar  to  have 
passed  the  test  of  time.  He  owes  much  to  a  few 
faithful  friends,  Mr.  Wilfrid  Meynell  in  especial,  whose 
wife,  as  Alice  Thompson  and  Alice  Meynell,  is  the 
author  of  a  few  poems  of  rare  and  exquisite  delicacy, 
likewise  of  the  Patmore  type.  But  Francis  Thompson, 
though  little  known,  is  growing  in  the  appreciation  of 
readers.  His  finest  poem.  The  Hound  of  Heaven,  is 
rapidly  and  rightly  becoming  recognized  as  an  ode  of 
exceptional  poignancy  and  almost  incredible  loveliness. 
It  possesses  the  universal  note,  transcending,  while  it 
interprets,  the  poet's  personal  experience  ;  and  its 
height,  gorgeousness,  and  subtlety,  and  a  certain 
intimate  mystical  appeal  are  characteristic  of  the 
kind  we  are  considering.  The  human  soul  (and  its 
science,  psychology)  are  still  in  the  dawn  of  exploration : 
spiritual  man  is  not  yet  weary  of  conventions  and  of 
illusions  disguising  his  own  needs.  He  still  declines 
the  majesty  of  his  strength,  and  deprecates  the  sanction 
of  his  weakness.    He  still  clings  to  earthly  integuments, 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  381 

and  weaves  his  aspirations  of  mixed  fabrics.  Thus, 
he  misses  the  splendid  appeal,  the  imcompromised, 
esoteric  truth,  of  this  ode,  ever  growing  on  his  con- 
viction : 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 
Of  my  own  mind ;  and  in  the  mist  of  tears 
I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 

The  imagery  is  as  lofty  as  the  thought  is  passionate 
and  austere. 


In  the  '  Preface,  by  way  of  Criticism ',  to  Familiar  R.  L. 
Studies  of  Men  and  Boohs — chiefly  reprints  of  articles  (i850- 
in  The  Cornhill — ,  Stevenson  admits  us  to  glimpses  of  1894). 
his  principles  and  tastes. 

A  writer  of  short  studies,  he  avers,  is  bound  to  a 
definite  'point  of  view'.  'What  he  cannot  vivify  he 
should  omit '.  There  may  be  perversion  and  even 
caricature.  '  The  lights  are  heightened,  the  shadows 
overcharged ',  and  in  this  preface  Stevenson  explains 
the  point  of  view  governing  each  of  the  studies.  The 
whole  volume,  from  title-page  to  finish,  is  full  of  interest 
to  Stevensonians.  The  epithet  '  famihar '  is  illu- 
minating. We  are  plainly  not  to  expect  detached  and 
documentary  evidence,  but  an  intimate  and  a  personal 
note.  The  dedication  to  his  father,  Thomas  Stevenson, 
'  by  whose  devices  the  great  sea  lights  in  every  quarter 
of  the  world  now  shine  more  brightly ',  is  not  only  an 


382     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

office  of  natural  piety.  It  illustrates  Stevenson's 
attraction  to  the  romance  of  lonely  seas,  and  to  the 
lives  of  those  who  go  down  to  them  in  ships.  Then 
there  are  the  subjects  of  the  studies.  Victor  Hugo, 
Robert  Burns,  Walt  Whitman  (in  the  early  days  of 
his  Enghsh  appreciation),  Thoreau,  Yoshida,  Villon, 
Charles  of  Orleans,  Pepys,  and  John  Knox ;  three 
Frenchmen,  two  democrats  of  America,  the  Scottish 
poet,  the  Scottish  theologian,  a  Japanese  reformer, 
and  the  prince  of  diarists.  Surely,  an  amalgam  of 
their  qualities — Scottish  grit,  humour  and  truth ;  Gallic 
romance  and  grace  ;  a  love  of  freedom  and  adventure, 
and  'an  insatiable  curiosity  in  all  the  shows  of  the 
world ' — does  not  imperfectly  represent  the  man, 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

The  style,  too,  is  characteristic.  '  I  ought  to  have 
stated  this  more  noisily ',  and  '  conceived  in  the 
noisiest  extreme  of  youthful  eloquence  ',  which  occur 
on.  successive  pages,  show  Stevenson  pleased  with  a 
new  word,  or,  rather,  with  an  old  word  freshly  applied. 
'  [Carlyle],  like  his  favourite  Ram  Dass,  had  a  fire 
in  his  belly  much  more  hotly  burning  than  the  patent 
reading  lamp  by  which  Macaulay  studied ',  is  an 
obviously  clever  piece  of  style,  '  I  have  only  added 
two  more  flagstones,  ponderous  like  their  predecessors, 
to  the  mass  of  obstruction  that  buries  the  reformer 
from  the  world ',  is,  perhaps,  more  obvious  and 
less  clever.  '  One  after  another  the  hghts  of  his 
life  went  out,  and  he  fell  from  circle  to  circle  to 
the  dishonoured  sickbed  of  the  end '  gives  the  purer 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  383 

Stevenson  touch. ;  and  all  these  are  taken  from  this 
Preface. 

We  see  it  more  clearly  in  other  essays.  Virginihus 
Puerisque  (inscribed  to  W.  E.  Henley),  Memories  and 
Portraits  and  Across  the  Plains  are  filled  with  examples 
of  this  stoical -plaintive  humour  in  which  Stevenson 
excelled.  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  passage 
from  '  Pulvis  et  Umbra  ',  in  the  last  of  those  volumes  : 

Meanwhile,  our  rotatory  island  loaded  with  pre- 
datory life,  and  more  drenched  with  blood,  both  animal 
and  vegetable,  than  ever  mutinied  ship,  scuds  through 
space  with  unimaginable  speed,  and  turns  alternate 
cheeks  to  the  reverberation  of  a  blazing  world,  ninety 
million  miles  away.  ...  Of  all  earth's  meteors,  here 
at  least  is  the  most  strange  and  consoling  :  that  this 
ennobled  lemur,  this  hair-crowned  bubble  of  the  dust, 
this  inheritor  of  a  few  years  and  sorrows,  should  yet 
deny  himself  his  rare  delights,  and  add  to  his  frequent 
pains,  and  live  for  an  ideal,  however  misconceived. 
Nor  can  we  stop  with  man.  .  .  .  Rather  this  desire 
of  well-being  and  this  doom  of  frailty  run  through  all 
the  grades  of  life.  .  .  .  The  whole  creation  groaneth 
and  travaileth  together.  It  is  the  common  and  godlike 
law  of  life  ^. 

^  A  similar  passage  occurs  in  Mr.  G.  Lowes  Dickinson's  Justice 
and  Liberty  (Dent,  1909),  beginning  :  '  This  animal  Man,  this  poor 
thin  wisp  of  sodden  straw,  buffeted  on  the  great  ocean  of  fate, 
this  ignorant,  feeble,  qiiarrelsome,  greedy,  cowardly  victim  and 
spawn  of  the  unnatural  parent  we  call  Nature,  this  abortion,  this 
clod,  this  indecent,  unnamable  thing,  is  also  as  certainly  the  child 
of  a  celestial  father '.  The  whole  extract  is  too  long  for  quotation, 
but,  like  much  modern  prose,  it  displays  the  influence  of  Stevenson 
in  its  exaltation  of  '  the  Reality  of  Realities  ',  the  Ideal. 


384     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

It  is  not  particularly  deep  thought,  and  it  is  not 
exceptionally  good  writing  ;  but  the  thing  was  worth 
saying  in  that  way — with  '  rotatory  ',  '  predatory  ', 
'  reverberation  ',  '  lemur  ',  and  the  rest — ,  especially 
in  Stevenson's  time,  not  very  long  since,  of  a  decaying 
theological  sanction. 

Or  take  a  few  of  his  aphoristic  sentences  :  '  The 
vegetarian  is  only  the  eater  of  the  dumb  '.  'If  your 
morals  make  you  dreary,  depend  upon  it  they  are 
wrong  '.  '  One  person  I  have  to  make  good  :  myself  '. 
'  One  is  almost  tempted  to  hint  that  it  does  not  much 
matter  whom  you  marry '.  '  The  woman  must  be 
talented  as  a  woman,  and  it  will  not  much  matter 
although  she  is  talented  in  nothing  else  '.  'To  marry 
is  to  domesticate  the  Recording  Angel '.  '  It  is  surely 
beyond  a  doubt  that  people  should  be  a  good  deal  idle 
in  youth '.  '  Atlas  was  just  a  gentleman  with  a  pro- 
tracted nightmare  '.  '  It  is  better  to  lose  health  like  a 
spendthrift  than  to  waste  it  like  a  miser '.  'To  distrust 
one's  impulses  is  to  be  recreant  to  Pan '.  There  is  a 
talent  in  this  philosophizing — as  of  Charles  Lamb 
with  a  tang — ,  which  Stevenson's  constant  care  for 
the  right  word  raised  to  the  level  of  genius,  and 
made  charming  in  the  ears  of  his  contemporaries. 
Perhaps  the  most  admirable  papers  in  this  class  are 
'  Ordered  South ',  '  The  Lantern  Bearers ',  and  '  Thomas 
Stevenson '. 

With  rare  literary  grace  Stevenson  appealed  to  the 
memory  of  '  Kingston  and  Ballantyne  the  brave  '  in 
issuing  Treasure  Island  (1883),  the  first  of  his  romances 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  385 

of  adventure.  He  might  rather  have  appealed  to 
Dumas,  Balzac  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  than  to  the  pure 
writers  for  boys,  Ballantyne,  Marryat  and  Kingston. 
For  this  story,  and  Kidnapped  (1886),  and  The  Black 
Arrow  (1888),  and  The  Master  of  Ballantrae  (1889)  and 
Catriona  (1893),  belong,  prescriptively,  to  the  class  of 
books  which  are  at  once  exciting  for  boys  and  fasci- 
nating for  adults.  Stevenson's  canvas  was  never  as 
broad  as  Scott's.  Except  in  Catriona,  he  omitted 
the  feminine  note,  and  he  was  inclined  to  be  negligent 
about  tying  his  knots.  But  there  was  ample  compen- 
sation for  these  faults  in  his  more  decorative  style,  and 
the  keener  immediateness  of  his  narration.  '  And  I  was 
going  to  sea  myself  ;  to  sea  in  a  schooner,  with  a 
piping  boatswain,  and  pig-tailed  singing  seamen  ;  to 
sea,  bound  for  an  unknown  island,  and  to  seek  for 
buried  treasures !  '  Jim  Hawkins's  cry  of  glee  in 
Treasure  Island  gives  the  very  flavour  of  romance  ; 
and  the  stream  flowed  with  stronger  current  through 
the  succeeding  books. 

Stevenson's  death  from  lung  disease  in  Samoa  at 
the  early  age  of  forty-four  was  a  genuine  loss  to  letters. 
The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  which  he 
published  in  1886,  is  still  unique  in  its  kind.  It  is  a 
study  of  dual  personality,  with  each  element  individual- 
ized, '  new-old,  and  shadowing  sense  at  war  with  soul ', 
as  Tennyson  described  his  Idylls,  and  an  allegory 
in  prose  of  the  same  conflict.  It  is  mordant  to 
the  point  of  unpleasantness,  and  as  brilliant  as 
it  is  relentless  in  its  psychological  guesswork.  In 
25 


386     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  stories  composing  Prince  Otto  (1885)  Stevenson 
had.  already  displayed  his  powers  of  concen- 
trated character-study.  Stevenson,  the  poet,  need 
not  detain  us.  Underwoods  and  A  Child^s  Garden  of 
Verse  owe  more  to  their  admirers  than  to  their 
merits. 
Richard  Richard  Jefferies,  like  Stevenson,  died  young,  but 
(1849_  not  too  young  to  have  bequeathed  a  few  imperishable 
1886).  ,5^itings.  Among  these.  The  Story  of  my  Heart  (1883) 
is  an  intimate  autobiography  of  sensations  and  aspira- 
tions, dehcate,  faithful,  and  carefully  observed,  and 
appealing  in  an  extraordinary  degree  to  the  hearts 
of  less  articulate  truth-seekers.  The  whole  book  is  a 
psalm  of  life,  of  man's  physical  and  spiritual  emancipa- 
tion. '  I  burn  life  like  a  torch  ',  he  declared.  '  No 
thought  which  I  have  ever  had  has  satisfied  my  soul '. 
Again  :  '  Fulness  of  physical  life  ever  brings  to  me  a 
more  eager  desire  of  soul-life  '.  Hence  the  statement 
of  his  creed  :  '  I  believe  all  manner  of  asceticism  to  be 
the  vilest  blasphemy.  .  .  .  The  ascetics  are  the  only 
persons  who  are  impure.  Increase  of  physical  beauty 
is  attended  by  increase  of  soul  beauty ' —  a  creed 
obviously  true,  and  yet  so  plainly  premature  as  to 
be  daily  falsified  by  experience.  For  experience  was 
greedily  swallowing  the  ideal  of  material  success, 
against  which  Jefferies  protests :  '  The  pageantry  of 
power,  the  still  more  foolish  pageantry  of  wealth,  the 
senseless  precedence  of  place  ;  words  fail  me  to  express 
my  utter  contempt  for  such  pleasures  or  such  am- 
bitions '.    Words  failed  this  transcendentalist  in  other 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  387 

places.  Like  Joubert  before  bim  (see  p.  80,  supra), 
Jefferies  felt  thedifl&culty of  language,  the  same  difficulty, 
we  may  add,  whicb  Meredith,  in  bis  poems,  solves 
sometimes  ambulando  :  '  One  of  tbe  greatest  difficulties 
I  bave  encountered  is  tbe  lack  of  words  to  express 
ideas.  ...  I  must  leave  my  book  as  a  wbole  fo  give  its 
own  meaning  to  its  words  '.  And,  as  a  type  of  bis 
'  book  as  a  wbole  ',  tbe  following  extract  may  be  sub- 
mitted : 

Give  me  life  strong  and  full  as  tbe  brimming  ocean  ; 
give  me  tbougbts  wide  as  its  plain ;  give  me  a  soul 
beyond  tbese.  Sweet  is  tbe  bitter  sea  by  tbe  sbore 
wbere  tbe  faint  blue  pebbles  are  lapped  by  tbe  green- 
grey  wave,  wbere  tbe  wind-quivering  foam  is  lotb  to 
leave  tbe  lasbed  stone.  Sweet  is  tbe  bitter  sea,  and  tbe 
clear  green  in  wbicb  tbe  gaze  seeks  tbe  sail,  looking 
tbrougb  tbe  glass  into  itself.  Tbe  sea  tbinks  for  me, 
as  I  listen  and  ponder  ;  tbe  sea  tbinks,  and  every  boom 
of  tbe  wave  repeats  my  prayer.  .  .  .  Tbe  sense  of 
soul-Hfe  burns  in  me  like  a  torcb. 

De  Quincey  related  tbe  visions  of  '  an  Englisb  opium- 
eater  ' ;  Newman  laid  bare  tbe  processes  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  belief  ;  but  no  one  bas  quite  effected  tbe 
particular  task  of  Jefieries,  wbo  suffered  nature  herself 
to  work  ber  wonders  upon  bim,  not  opposing  ber  will, 
nor  overmuch  aiding  tbe  ministration,  but  setting 
forth  as  simply  as  he  could  the  true  experience  of  her 
working.  He  was  tbe  son  of  a  farmer,  and  bis  native 
country  was  the  Wiltshire  downland,  which  Thomas 
Hughes   has  celebrated   in   Tom  Brown's  Schooldays. 


388     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

The  wide  peace  of  these  surroundings  was  a  permanent 
influence  for  good  ;  and  his  papers  on  country  life  have 
the  merit  of  accurate  knowledge  as  well  as  of  poetic 
imagination.  There  are  several  volumes  of  this  kind, 
the  most  dehghtful,  perhaps,  being  that  called  Field 
and  Hedgerow.  It  is  the  child  of  Gilbert  White's 
Selborne,  and  the  father  of  many  books  of  the  same 
class,  among  which  may  justly  be  mentioned  Idle- 
hurst  (1898)  by  'John  Halsham '  (Mr.  G.  Forrester 
Scott).  But  the  master  surpasses  his  disciples  in  a 
certain  passionate  intuition  into  the  hidden  qualities 
of  the  '  medical  herb  '. 
W.  E.  The  dedication  to  William  Ernest  Henley  of  Steven- 
(1849^  son's  Virginibus  Puerisque  is  a  sign  of  the  affinity 
1903).  between  these  two  contemporary  writers.  They  wrote 
some  plays  together,  which  were  performed  at  London 
theatres,  but  which  have  no  permanent  value,  and 
they  were  joined  by  common  sentiments  on  art, 
literature  and  life.  Henley's  contemporary  fame  was 
mainly  as  a  journalist,  in  connection  with  The  Scots 
Observer,  afterwards  The  National  Observer,  and  its 
particular  type  of  contributions,  in  a  spirit  of  romantic 
idealism.  His  influence  on  journalism  was  remarkable, 
and  he  collected  on  his  staff  a  number  of  young  men, 
some  of  whom,  though  middle-aged  to-day,  still  feel 
the  spirit  of  his  teaching.  Others  have  abandoned 
its  tradition  in  response  to  the  more  urgent  call  of 
romance  in  the  realities  of  to-day.  His  posthumous 
fame  is  as  a  poet,  and  several  volumes  of  brave  and 
ardent  verse,  together  with  two  series  of  prose  Views 


SYMBOLS  OF  BEAUTY  389 

and  Reviews,  and  an  anthology,  Lyra  Heroica,  are  his 
chief  literary  remains. 

Wilde's  fame  was  won  as  a  dramatist  {Lady  Winder-  Oscar 
mere's  Fan  and  others),  and  will  probably  live  as  a  (i856^- 
poet.  An  edition  de  luxe  of  his  works  has  recently  1900). 
been  published,  and  reminds  us  of  the  exceptional 
sense  of  beauty — raised  deliberately  to  a  cult,  and 
obviously  associated  with  the  tendencies  discussed 
in  the  present  section — which  this  gifted  Irishman 
possessed.  He  did  not  always  apply  it  to  the  highest 
uses.  He  was  too  often  tempted  to  pose  as  the 
sensitive-clever  young  man,  and  the  atmosphere  of 
some  of  his  works  is  as  dreary  in  its  kind  as  that 
of  'Ouida'  (Louise  de  la  Ramee,  1840-1908).  But 
his  Poems  (1881)  are  the  pledge,  if  not,  in  places, 
the  fulfilment,  of  a  true  poetic  inspiration,  and  there 
are  many  who  find  its  confirmation  in  the  Ballad  of 
Reading  Gaol,  issued  anonymously  in  1898.  His  last 
prose-work,  De  Profundis,  is  still  too  near  to  us  for 
criticism.  Exquisite  writing  has  its  privileges,  and 
time  only  can  decide  if  this  book  is  a  genuine  cri  du 
coBur — ^a  '  human  document ',  in  literary  slang — of  a 
rare  and  valuable  type,  or  merely  a  clever  affectation 
of  the  thing  which  is  not. 

The  connection  of  literature  with  the  stage,  which 
Wilde  consummated  in  comedy,  and  which  Tennyson, 
aided  by  Sir  Henry  Irving,  had  effected  tentatively 
in  poetic  drama,  has  since  been  continued  in  that  kind 
by  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips,  and,  more  notably,  in  Ireland, 
by  Mr.   W.   B.   Yeats.     Mr.   Yeats,   and  the   'Celtic 


390     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Renaissance  ',  of  which  he  is  the  father  and  type,  are 
properly  to  be  accounted  the  last  phase  of  the  passion 
for  beauty  and  its  symbols  which  we  have  tried  to 
trace  through  Keats  and  Rossetti  to  our  own  day. 
Its  increment  to  loveliness  is  immense,  and  if  the  bulk 
of  its  achievement  stands  a  little  outside  of  the  line 
of  national  literature,  reviewed,  historically,  as  one 
piece — if  it  represents,  in  other  words,  a  kind  of  litera- 
ture more  narrowly  professionalized,  and  demanding 
more  esoteric  apprehension,  than  is  wholly  comfortable 
to  the  consciousness  of  Chaucer's  and  Shakespeare's 
heirs — ,  we,  whose  enjoyment  it  serves,  may  be  the 
more  lavish  of  gratitude,  inasmuch  as  the  writers  who 
have  produced  it  have  been  content  to  make  their 
labour  its  own  reward,  and  to  treat  the  art  which  they 
have  cultivated  as  the  jealous  mistress  of  all  their 
being.  Moreover,  their  exploitation  of  the  art  to  the 
uttermost  limit  of  its  capacities  must  in  the  end  advance 
its  interpretation  to  a  wider  audience.  Mr.  Hardy, 
in  The  Dynasts,  has  attempted  a  new  poetic  form ; 
and  Mr.  Wells,  in  Tono- Bungay,  a  variant  in  fiction. 
These  experiments  are  significant,  perhaps,  of  a  further 
development  of  literature,  including,  not  defiant  of, 
'  science  '.  Then  the  beauty  so  jealously  sought  wiU 
be  available  for  the  new  forms,  and  the  truths  of 
*  literature '  and  '  science,'  too  long  specialized  in 
their  departments,  will  be  combined  in  a  higher 
synthesis  than  those  older  ones  of  Lucretius  or  of 
Dante,  and  will  be  justified  of  the  sacrifices  they  have 
exacted. 


§  9.  THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM. 


THOUGH  little  has  been  added  to  literature  from  the 
rostrum  or  the  stage  since  the  speeches  of  Edmund 
Burke  (1729-97)  and  the  plays  of  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan  (1751-1816),  a  considerable  debt  has  been  in- 
curred in  other  directions.  Valuable  contributions  have 
been  made  by  the  pulpit  and  the  classroom,  despite  the 
partial  usurpation  of  their  rights  by  the  ubiquitous 
and  all-absorbing  novel.  Few  would  choose  to-day  a 
theologian's  sermons  in  preference  to  Mrs.  Ward's 
Robert  Elsmere,  or  a  history  of  the  Civil  War  in  England 
in  preference  to  Shorthouse's  John  Inglesant  (1881), 
or  would  study  a  Blue-book  on  the  Poor  Law  in  pre- 
ference to  reading  Besant's  All  Sorts  and  Conditions 
of  Men.  But  the  general  reader  has  been  served  by 
another  class  of  writers  in  the  nineteenth  century  in 
a  manner  and  to  a  degree  quite  unparalleled  before. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  British  literature  as 
sudden,  as  brilliant  and  as  clearly  marked  as  the  flourish- 
ing of  journalists  in  the  noon  of  the  Victorian  era. 
Journalism,  as  the  term  was  understood  by  its  practi- 
tioners forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  was  recruited  from  the 


392     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

foremost  writers,  and  included — in  the  sense  of  contri- 
butors to  the  periodical  press — men  of  letters  as  eminent 
as  Ruskin  and  statesmen  as  distinguished  as  Gladstone. 
The  greater  novelists,  Thackeray,  TroUope,  George 
Meredith,  and  the  rest,  regularly  published  by  instal- 
ments in  the  monthly  reviews,  and  the  titles  of  many 
collected  works,  such  as  Froude's  Short  Studies  on  Great 
Subjects  and  Stephen's  Hours  in  a  Library,  bear  witness 
to  their  resuscitation  from  the  magazines. 
Journals        It  was  essentially  an  epoch  of  great  editors.     John 

and  their  j  x.  o 

editors,  Thaddeus  Delane  (1817-79)  was  editor  of  The  Times 
from  1841  till  1877,  and  raised  it  to  the  height  of  its 
power  and  influence  as  'The  Thunderer'.  His  Life 
and  Letters  have  recently  been  issued  by  his  nephew, 
Mr.  Dasent,  a  son  of  Sir  George  Webbe  Dasent  (1817- 
96),  Delane's  brother-in-law  and  contemporary,  who 
was  assistant-editor  of  The  Times  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  same  period,  and  who  is  known  in  literature 
as  the  author  of  tales  and  translations  from  the  Norse. 
The  Daily  News  was  founded  in  1846,  with  Charles 
Dickens  as  its  first  editor,  and  The  Daily  Telegraph  in 
1855.  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  evening  newspaper  was 
the  creation  of  George  Smith  (1824-91),  the  head 
of  the  publishing-house  of  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  who 
founded  in  1859  the  Cornhill  Magazine,  first  edited  by 
Thackeray,  and  afterwards  by  his  son-in-law,  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen.  Stephen  was  likewise  the  first  editor — after- 
wards associated  with  and  succeeded  by  Dr.  Sidney 
Lee — of  a  later  enterprise  (1882)  of  George  Smith,  The 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography.    Frederic  Chapman 


THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM  393 

(1823-95),  another  London  publisher,  the  head 
of  Chapman  and  Hall,  started  the  Fortnightly  Review 
in  1865,  and  John  Morley  (now  Viscount  Morley)  and 
George  Meredith  have  been  among  its  editors.  James 
Anthony  Froude  (1818-94)  edited  Fraser's  Magazine 
from  1860  tiU  1874.  Walter  Bagehot  (1826^77)  was 
editor  at  various  times  of  The  Inquirer,  The  Economist 
and  the  National  Review.  The  London  Review  (to  be 
distinguished  from  The  London  Magazine  of  De  Quincey's 
generation)  was  founded  in  1835  by  John  Stuart  Mill, 
as  an  organ  of  philosophic  radicalism,  not  very  distant 
in  its  views  from  Jeremy  Bentham's  Westminster 
Review,  established  in  1824.  Punch  was  founded  in 
1841,  and  attracted  from  the  start  the  services  of  the 
most  distinguished  humourists.  Mark  Lemon  (1809-70) 
was  its  first  editor,  and  among  past  Knights  of  its 
Round  Table  have  been  Douglas  Jerrold  (1803-57), 
Richard  Doyle  (1824-83),  who  designed  the  cover, 
Thackeray,  John  Leech  (1817-64),  George  du  Maurier 
(1834-96),  who,  late  in  life,  added  fiction  to  draughts- 
manship, and  wrote  at  least  one  successful  novel, 
subsequently  dramatized.  Trilby,  and,  among  others, 
the  veteran  Sir  John  Tenniel,  who  enters  literature 
chiefly  as  the  illustrator  of  Lewis  Carroll's  immortal 
Alice  books.  The  Spectator,  revived  from  the  eighteenth 
century,  was  founded  in  1828,  and  its  chief  Victorian 
editor  (1861-97)  was  Richard  Holt  Hutton  (1826-97). 
The  AthencBum  was  established  in  the  same  year.  The 
Guardian  in  1846,  and  The  Saturday  Review  in  1855. 
Sir  James  Knowles  (1831-1908)  founded  The  Nineteenth 


394     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Century  in  1877,  with  a  sonnet  by  Tennyson  to  send 
it  o£E. 
Pub-        This  list  is  long,  but  not  exhaustive.     The  relations 

Ushers.  ,  ,  i  ^  ^•   ^  •       • 

between  authors  and  pubhshers  were  more  intimate 
then  than  now.  John  Murray's  friendship  with  Byron 
has  been  commemorated  above  (p.  120).  George 
Eliot  belonged  to  the  Blackwoods,  Charlotte  Bronte 
and  the  Brownings  to  George  Smith,  and  literary 
biography  is  full  of  pleasant  tales  of  these  relationships. 
Such  intimacy,  since  relaxed,  in  part  at  the  instance 
of  Sir  Walter  Besant,  who  founded  the  Authors'  Society 
(1883),  and  in  part  by  the  multiplication  of  writers  and 
the  inevitable  development  of  commerce  in  books,  was 
important  in  the  sense  that  it  encouraged  enterprise. 
Leading  publishers  could  rely  on  the  help  and  goodwill 
of  authors  more  or  less  closely  connected  with  them, 
and  to  the  names  of  those  already  mentioned — Murray, 
Blackwood,  Chapman,  Smith — there  should  be  added 
Richard  Bentley  (1794-1871),  who  made  Dickens 
editor  of  his  Miscellany  (1837)  ;  George  Bentley  (1828- 
95),  his  son,  first  editor  of  the  defunct  Temple  Bar; 
Daniel  Macmillan  (1813-51)  and  his  successors,  who 
have  since  absorbed  the  Bentleys'  business  ;  Thomas 
Norton  Longman  (1771-1842)— the  third  Thomas 
Longman — and  his  sons,  Thomas  (iv,  1804-79)  and 
William  (1813-77) ;  Adam  Black  (1784-1874),  of  the 
Encyclofcedia  Britannica ;  Richard  Benton  Seeley 
(1798-1886),  George  Routledge  (1812-^8)  and  John 
Cassell  (1817-65). 

Round    these    men,    and    round    the     newspaper- 


THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM  395 

proprietors — the  Walters  of  The  Times ;  the  Borthwicks 
(Peter,  1804-52,  and  his  son,  afterwards  Lord  Glenesk, 
1830-1908)  of  The  Morning  Post ;  the  Levys  (Joseph 
Moses,  1812-88,  and  his  son,  now  Lord  Burnham)  of 
The  Daily  Telegraph,  and  others — there  were  gathered 
the  editors  and  contributors  in  whose  co-operation 
confidence  could  be  placed.  Dickens  was  an  editor  by 
instinct.  Though  he  held  the  helm  of  The  Daily  News 
only  for  about  six  months,  there  are  many  stories  of  his 
kindness  as  well  as  records  of  his  success  in  connection 
with  various  miscellanies  and  especially  with  his  House- 
hold Words.  Thackeray,  too,  was  a  born  journalist, 
and  the  annals  of  the  Cornhill  in  the  successive  charge 
of  Thackeray,  Stephen  and  James  Payn  (1830-98), 
testify  freely  to  the  same  qualities.  Fraser's  hospitality 
to  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  in  the  days  when  they  were 
heterodox  and  obscure,  has  been  mentioned  in  its 
due  places  ;  and,  while  many  of  the  reviews,  with  The 
Quarterly  and  The  Edinburgh  at  their  head,  still  maintain 
their  prestige,  there  are  some  of  us  old  enough  to  regret 
the  decease  of  Eraser's,  Temple  Bar,  Longman's  and 
Macmillan's  magazines,  and  even  of  Charlotte  Yonge's 
Monthly  Packet  and  Mrs.  Henry  Wood's  Argosy  ;  and, 
haply,  old-fashioned  enough  to  wonder  if  Tit- Bits  (1881) 
and  The  Strand  Magazine  (1891)  are  fully  adequate  in 
compensation,  despite  cheaper  processes  of  illustration 
and  increased  facilities  of  distribution  devised  for  a 
literate  proletariat. 


396     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

ii. 

These  questions  belong  to  social  history  rather  than 
to  hterary  criticism.  Here,  in  the  golden  age  of  journal- 
ism, a  more  detailed  account  is  due  of  some  of  the  leading 
journalists  who  were  likewise  leading  men  of  letters. 
Macaulay.  The  first  group  in  this  class  is  that  of  the  historians, 
and  the  first  name  in  that  group  is  Lord  Macaulay's. 
He  collected  his  Edinburgh  essays  in  1843,  and  definitely 
broke  with  journalism  a  year  or  two  before  that  date. 
His  History  of  England  (since  the  accession  of  James  ii) 
was  begun  in  1839,  when  Macaulay  was  Secretary  of 
State  for  War  ;  the  first  two  volumes  appeared  in  1848, 
and  the  last  two  in  1855,  two  years  before  his  peerage 
and  four  years  before  his  death.  Macaulay's  historical 
method  was,  Uke  Carlyle's,  scientific.  It  was  based, 
that  is  to  say,  upon  the  study  and  collation  of  con- 
temporary, unedited  documents,  as  far  as  they  were 
available.  In  his  task,  which  covered,  comparatively, 
a  brief  period  of  time,  Macaulay  was  aided  by  his 
memory,  which  he  trained  to  remarkable  feats.  This 
gift  occasionally  betrayed  him  into  inaccuracies  of  fact, 
and  a  further  vice  (which  he  encouraged)  was  likewise 
due  to  an  excess  of  talent.  He  had  a  genius  for  general- 
ization, for  bird's-eye  views  of  tracts  of  territory,  and 
sometimes  employed  this  faculty  to  prove  conclusions 
not  supported  by  ordnance-survey.  At  the  same  time, 
allowing  for  his  bias  towards  safe  and  moderate 
standards,  and  admitting  also  his  tendency  to  a  hard, 
antithetical  prose-style,  this  gift  illumined  his  narrative 


THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM  397 

with  passages  of  extraordinary  vividness,  especially 
in  his  accounts  of  stages  of  social  conditions.  Thus, 
the  third  chapter  of  his  History,  '  The  State  of  England 
in  1685  ',  though,  as  he  says,  '  composed  from  scanty 
and  dispersed  materials '  (to  which  but  few  references 
are  given),  contains,  in  its  fifty  thousand  words,  the 
most  brilliant  composite  conspectus  of  the  various 
phases  of  national  life  which  it  is  possible  to  conceive. 
The  whole  chapter  is  as  interesting  as  a  novel,  and  it 
is  difi&cult  to  realize  the  immense  erudition  and  the 
technical  power  of  arrangement  which  the  even  flow  of 
the  bright  narrative  submerged.  The  glitter  of  style 
might  mislead  him.  It  was  not  correct  to  represent 
the  petticoated  peasant  women  of  the  Tyne  as  '  half- 
naked  women  chaunting  a  wild  measure  ' ;  he  sometimes 
misquoted  Pepys,  or  drew  false  inferences  from  such 
quotations,  and  his  love  of  epigram  and  antithesis  led 
to  much  exaggeration.  But  no  one  save  Macaulay 
could  summarize  volumes  of  documents  and  masses  of 
authority — or,  in  places,  again,  mere  feathers  of  tradition 
— in  such  a  form  as  is  presented  by  this  chapter,  among 
the  twenty-five  great  chapters  of  his  history.  '  The 
servile  Judges  and  Sheriffs  of  those  evil  days  could  not 
shed  blood  so  fast  as  the  poets  cried  out  for  it '.  Such 
a  sentence  peals  at  the  intellect.  It  is  not  possible  to 
evade  its  tremendous  compendious  statement  of  the 
corruption  of  justice  and  the  intemperance  of  wit  ; 
and  Macaulay  constantly  commanded  this  lightning 
brevity  and  force. 
J.  A.  Froude,  whose  Nemesis  of  Faith  (1849)  was 


398     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Froude.  mentioned  on  page  212,  and  who  resigned  his  Oriel 
fellowship  in  consequence  of  the  controversy  it  aroused, 
became  the  friend,  and  the  disciple,  and,  eventually, 
tie  literary  executor  of  Carlyle.  In  that  capacity  he 
published  several  books  of  biography,  letters  and 
reminiscences,  which  filled  the  'eighties  of  the  century 
with  a  heated  discussion  as  to  the  relations  between 
Carlyle  and  his  wife.  Probably,  Froude  was  indiscreet 
and  inclined  to  a  sensational  view,  but  this  question  of 
biography  is  really  not  important  to  the  life-work  of 
either  writer.  Froude's  work  as  an  historian  comprised 
a  History  of  England,  in  twelve  volumes,  dealing  with 
the  few  years  from  the  faU  of  Wolsey  to  the  defeat  of 
the  Armada  ;  The  English  in  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century  ;  and  various  volumes  arising  out  of  his  visits 
to  the  Colonies,  (after  he  had  given  up  the  editorship 
of  Eraser's),  of  which  the  best  known  is  Oceana  (1886). 
He  held  the  chair  of  history  at  Oxford  in  the  last  years 
of  his  life,  and  his  professorial  lectures  on  Erasmus, 
The  Council  of  Trent,  and  English  Seamen  in  the  Six- 
teenth Century  rank  with  his  Short  Studies  among  the 
most  finished  examples  of  narrative  English  prose. 
Into  the  value  and  demerits  of  his  scholarship  this  is  not 
the  place  to  enter. 

Freeman.  Froude's  predecessor  in  the  Oxford  chair  was  his 
constant  controversialist,  Edward  Augustus  Freeman 
(1823-92).  Freeman,  Hke  Froude,  was  a  journalist, 
in  the  sense  employed  in  this  section,  and  he  became 
a  regular  contributor  to  The  Saturday  Review  from  its 
start  ( 1 855) .    His  great  work  is  the  History  of  the  Norman 


THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM  399 

Conquest,  which  occupied  him  for  more  than  twelve 
years.  He  wrote  histories  of  the  Saracens  and  of 
Sicily,  and  his  collected  essays  fill  several  readable 
volumes. 

The  Cambridge  colleagues  of  these  professors  were  Sir  Sedey, 
John  Robert  Seeley  (1834-1895),  the  pubhsher's  son, 
who  held  the  chair  of  modern  history  at  Cambridge  from 
1869  till  his  death,  and  the  first  Lord  Acton  (1834-1902), 
who  succeeded  him.  Seeley's  anonymous  Ecce  Homo 
(1865),  which,  like  The  Nemesis  of  Faith,  belonged  to 
the  controversy  between  knowledge  and  belief,  has  been 
mentioned  in  the  section  on  that  subject.  Here  we 
need  only  refer  to  his  lectures  on  The  Expansion  of 
England,  which  form  in  many  respects  the  most  in- 
spiring and  suggestive  account  ever  placed  before 
students  of  England's  foreign  wars  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Lord  Acton's  contributions  to  history  were 
as  much  to  method  as  to  results.  He  represented, 
preeminently,  the  scientific  point  of  view  and  the  study 
of  the  document ;  and  he  cultivated  a  severer  style  than 
Froude,  Freeman  and  Seeley.  He  planned  the  Cam- 
bridge Modern  History,  which  Dr.  Prothero  and  others 
have  carried  out. 

Bishop  (William)  Stubbs  (1825-1901),  the  consti-  stubbs, 
tutionalist,  and  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  (1822-88),  ^^^l' 
the  jurist,  who,  like  Freeman,  was  a  Saturday  reviewer 
from  the  start,  and  whose  monograph  on  Ancient  Law 
is  particularly  valuable,  need  not  detain  us  further. 
A  last  word  in  this  connection  is  due  to  the  memory  of 
John  Richard  Green  (1837-83),  whose  Short  History  of 


400     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

the  English  People,  alike  in  its  original  shape  and  in 
later  illustrated  or  abbreviated  editions,  has  deservedly 
won  a  high  degree  of  popularity  for  its  lucidity,  its 
completeness,  and  its  moral  force. 
,^°yP  In  the  wide  neutral  territories  between  history  and 
sophers.  philosophy  occur  the  names  of  Henry  Thomas  Buckle 
(1821-62),  author  of  the  History  of  Civilization  in 
England  ;  of  William  Edward  Hartpole  Lecky  (1838- 
1903),  an  Irishman,  author  of  The  History  of  European 
Morals,  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  of  an 
essay  (in  two  volumes)  on  Democracy  and  Liberty,  and, 
among  other  books,  of  one  called  A  Map  of  Life,  written 
in  a  pleasant  vein  of  didactic  reflectiveness  ;  further, 
of  Walter  Bagehot  (1826-77),  the  economist,  whose 
Physics  and  Politics  (and,  less  directly,  his  Lomhard 
Street)  threw  a  novel  light  upon  the  relations  of  those 
branches  of  learning,  and  of  others  enough. 

An  interest  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  a  clear 
tendency  to  practical  standards  distinguished  two 
thinkers  in  this  age,  one  of  whom  is  still  with  us.  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen  (1832-1904)  and  John  Morley,  now 
Viscount  Morley,  who  was  born  in  1838.  Stephen's 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  first  appeared 
in  1876,  and  he  returned  to  the  same  theme  in  his 
posthumous  volume  of  lectures  on  English  Literature 
and  Society  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Between  the  two 
he  published,  in  addition  to  the  essays  contained  in 
his  Hours  in  a  Library,  and  apart  from  his  editorial 
work,  a  valuable  treatise  on  The  Science  of  Ethics, 
and  studies  of  The  English  Utilitarians  and  An  Agnostic's 


THE  HIGHER  JOURNALISM  401 

Apology.  Lord  Morley's  works  include  the  great 
biography  of  Gladstone,  lives  of  Cromwell  and  of 
Cobden,  several  volumes  of  Miscellanies,  a  brilliant 
monograph  On  Compromise,  and  studies  of  Diderot  and 
the  EncyclopcBdists,  of  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  and  others. 
Like  Stephen,  he  has  always  been  a  busy  editor,  and 
his  rank  as  a  writer  of  English  prose  is  certainly  not 
less  high  than  his  distinguished  record  as  a  statesman. 
Here  we  meet  again^  the  name — his  fame  is  outside 
of  our  limits — of  Henry  Sidgwick  (1838-1900),  author 
of  Methods  of  Ethics,  Elements  of  Politics,  and  other 
works,  whose  life-long  connection  with  Cambridge  was 
continued  by  Mrs.  Sidgwick,  as  principal  of  Newnham. 
Pure  philosophy  claims  Thomas  Hill  Green  (1836-82), 
the  Oxford  idealist,  vfhose  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  appeared 
in  1883,  and  who  has  his  shrine  in  fiction  as  the  '  Mr. 
Gray '  of  Robert  Elsmere  ;  and  final  reference  may  be 
made,  among  Oxford  teachers  of  recent  date,  to  Green's 
disciple,  Richard  Lewis  Nettleship  (1846-92). 


m. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  fill  out  this  sketch,  now  so  Conclu- 
shadowy  and  imperfect,  with  a  more  ample  account  of  the  "°°' 
lives  and  writings  of  the  men  and  women  who  made  the 
middle  years  of  Queen  Victoria  so  great  a  flowering-time 
of  letters.    When  Thackeray,  Froude,  Stephen,  Morley, 
Bagehot  and  their  like  were  among  the  editors  of  reviews, 

^  See  p.  222,  supra. 
26 


402     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

and  when  the  contributors  on  whom  they  drew  included 
Tennyson,  Matthew  Arnold,  Symonds,  T.  H.  Green 
and  Sir  Henry  Maine,  to  name  five  only  among  the  dead, 
as  typical  of  the  rest,  it  is  obvious  that  journalism 
enjoyed  a  brilHant  spell  of  active  talent.  Space  forbids 
a  closer  examination  of  the  actual  files  of  the  reviews, 
or  a  more  detailed  account  of  such  writers  as  do  not 
belong  to  the  single  category  of  pure  literature.  Litera- 
ture applied  to  other  ends  than  pure  literature  itself, 
whether  to  historical  research  or  to  philosophical 
speculation,  must  be  excluded  from  our  purview. 

It  is  time  to  try  a  few  conclusions,  however  faltering 
and  tentative,  from  the  long  survey  we  have  made. 

Taking  poetry  first,  it  is  clear  that,  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  good  writing  has  become  more 
common.  Whatever  lack  there  may  be,  whether  of  brain 
or  blood,  whether  of  marrow  or  sap,  form,  at  least,  will 
be  available.  This  has  been  Tennyson's  gift,  and  the 
legacy  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  to  their  successors.  A 
young  poet,  pursuing  the  beaten  track,  finds  his  experi- 
ments in  writing  already  made.  For  him,  there  are  no 
more  jej unities,  such  as  Wordsworth  committed  ;  no 
more  stumbling  measures,  such  as  tripped  up  Crabbe. 
Mr.  Alfred  Noyes,  Mr.  Herbert  Trench,  and  the  rest  of 
the  tuneful  choir  who  sang  the  cradle-songs  of  the 
new  century  inherit  the  forms  of  verse  and  the  re- 
sources of  diction  which  were  perfected  in  the  previous 
generation. 

One  illustration  will  make  this  plain.     Such  a  singer 


CONCLUSION  403 

as  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips,  whose  first  garland  was  woven 
in  1890  or  thereabouts,  and  who  has  since  compromised 
his  aims  by  constructing  decorative  plays,  typifies  in 
his  Poems  (1897)  and  in  his  New  Poems  (1908)  this  new 
facility  of  form.     Consider  the  following  passages  : 

Thou  shalt  persuade  the  harvest  and  bring  on 

The  deeper  green ;  or  silently  attend 

The  fiery  funeral  of  foliage  old, 

Connive  with  Time  serene  and  the  good  hours,  .  ,  . 
5  Thou  meanest  what  the  sea  has  striven  to  say 

So  long,  and  yearned  up  the  cUfFs  to  tell ; 

Thou  art  what  all  the  winds  have  uttered  not, 

What  the  still  night  suggesteth  to  the  heart. 

Thy  voice  i*  like  to  music  heard  ere  birth, 
10  Some  spirit  lute  touched  on  a  spirit  sea ; 

Thy  face  remembered  is  from  other  worlds, 

It  has  been  died  for,  though  I  know  not  when. 

It  has  been  sung  of,  though  I  know  not  where. 

It  has  the  strangeness  of  the  luring  West, 
15  And  of  sad  sea-horizons ;    beside  thee 

I  am  aware  of  other  times  and  lands, 

Of  birth  far  back,  of  lives  in  many  stars.  .  .  . 

So  far,  Apollo  to  Marpessa  ;  and,  now,  from  Mar- 
pessa's  reply,  in  the  poem  called  by  her  name  : 

Then  the  deUght  of  flinging  the  sunbeams. 
Diffusing  silent  bliss ;  and  yet  more  sweet, — 

20  To  cherish  fruit  on  the  warm  wall ;  to  raise 
Out  of  the  tomb  to  glory  the  pale  wheat. 
Serene  ascension  by  the  rain  prepared ; 
To  work  with  the  benignly  falling  hours, 
And  beautiful  slow  Time.  .  .  . 

25  To  shine  on  the  rejected,  and  arrive 

To  women  that  remember  in  the  night ;  .  .  . 
Out  of  our  sadness  have  we  made  this  world 
So  beautiful ;  the  sea  sighs  in  our  brain, 
And  in  our  heart  the  yearning  of  the  moon. 


404     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

Again,  from  Beautiful  Death  : — 

30  Blind  shall  I  be  and  good,  dumb  and  serene : 
I  shall  not  blame,  nor  question ;  I  shall  shine 
Diffused  and  tolerant,  luminous  and  large. 
No  longer  shall  I  vex,  but  live  my  life 
In  solaces,  caresses,  and  in  balms, 

35  Nocturnal  soothings  and  nutritious  sighs. 

The  unhappy  mind  an  odour  shall  be  breathed ; 
I  shall  be  sagely  blown,  flung  with  design. 
Assist  this  bland  and  universal  scheme. 
Industrious,  happy,  sweet,  dehcious,  dead  ! 

Last,  from  Endymion  : 

40  And  I  begin  to  sorrow  for  strange  things 
And  to  be  sad  with  men  long-dead ;  0  now 
I  suffer  with  old  legends,  and  I  pine 
At  long  sea-glances  for  a  single  sail.  .  .  . 
Listen  !  the  sea  is  on  the  verge  of  speech, 

45  The  breeze  has  something  private  for  me :    Night 
Would  lead  me,  like  a  creature  dumb,  with  signs. 

With  which  compare,  from  Paolo  and  Francesca  : 

It  is  such  souls  as  mine  that  go  to  sweU 
The  childless  cavern  cry  of  the  barren  sea, 
Or  make  that  human  ending  to  night-wind. 

And  from  Herod  : 

50  And  he  shall  still  that  old  sob  of  the  sea, 
And  heal  the  unhappy  fancies  of  the  wind. 
And  turn  the  moon  from  all  that  hopeless  quest. 

The  writing  is  unquestionably  beautiful,  but  those 
who  have  followed  the  progress  of  poetry  in  these 
pages  will  applaud  such  triumphs  with  discretion. 
Ever  indissolubly  involved  in  them,  and  implicated 
in  every  fold  of  all  their  texture,  are  the  magic  of  Cole- 
ridge and  Walter  Pater,  as  makers  of  English  style. 


CONCLUSION  405 

*  She  is  older  than  the  rocks  among  which  she  sits  ; 
like  the  vampire,  she  has  been  dead  many  times,  and 
learned  the  secrets  of  the  grave  ;  and  has  been  a  diver 
in  deep  seas,  and  keeps  their  fallen  day  about  her ' 
(see  p.  375,  supra)  might  have  been  written  of  Mr. 
Phillips's  muse  in  such  contexts  as  lines  5-10,  15-17, 
28-29,  40-46,  and  47-51  of  the  quotations  from  different 
poems,  which,  for  convenience'  sake,  we  have  ventured 
to  number  consecutively.  His  iterated,  recurring  note 
about  the  wind  and  the  sea  is  descended  straight  from 
the  romantic  movement  which  dawned  a  hundred  years 
before.  Nay,  lines  33  to  36  are  in  the  very  language 
of  Wordsworth  : 

Hers  shall  be  the  breathing  balm, 
And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 
Of  mute  insensate  things. 

What  is  added  is  Patmore's  Latinity,  solemnizing 
every  theme.  '  Persuade ',  '  connive ',  '  serene ',  '  dif- 
fusing', 'benign',  'luminous',  'tolerant',  'bland',  'in- 
dustrious', and  so  forth,  recall  the  language  of  The 
Unknown  Eros  and  its  author's  contention  (see  p.  374, 
supra) that 

These  thoughts  which  you  have  sung 
In  the  vernacular, 

Should  be,  as  others  of  the  Church's  are. 
Decently  cloak'd  in  the  Imperial  Tongue. 

Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  has  succeeded  in  marrying  the 
manner  of  Patmore  and  Pater  to  the  matter  of  Coleridge 
and  Keats,  on  the  side  of  their  mystical  appeal,  and  we 
have  dwelt  at  this  length  upon  his  striking  and  attractive 


4o6     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

achievement  because  it  illustrates  so  well  the  temptations 
to  which  poetry  is  prone  in  a  time  following  great 
writers.  Variations,  however  ingenious,  on  models  set 
in  the  past,  are  a  sign  of  technical  skill,  of  literary 
mastery,  of  tact,  and  faith,  and  power,  but  not  of 
plenary  inspiration.  The  like  criticism  applies,  with 
Wordsworth  and  Arnold  as  exemplars,  to  the  elegiac 
muse  of  Mr.  WiUiam  Watson. 

It  is  rash  to  dogmatize  about  poetry  ;  it  is  yet  more 
rash  to  prophesy.  Those  who  hold  what  Dr.  A.  C. 
Bradley  calls  '  the  formalist  heresy '  will  be  most  of 
all  difficult  to  convince  that  the  true  problem  of  the 
poetry  of  the  twentieth  century  is  that  of  the  adequacy 
of  the  poetic  vehicle  to  thoughts  maturing  for  expression. 
Beautiful  writing  is  a  cultivable  art,  but  its  powers  have 
still  to  be  extended  to  include,  without  forfeiture  of 
beauty,  all  the  material  waiting  to  be  clothed.  The 
Lyrical  Ballads  of  the  twentieth  century  may  be  pre- 
paring out  of  sight ;  it  may  even  be  that  its  George 
Crabbe,  forerunning  it,  is  still  to  be  apprenticed,  and 
that  form  is  once  more  to  be  passed  through  the 
dissolving  crucible  of  thought.  To  those  who  believe 
in  this  re-birth,  through  all  disappointment  and  false 
hopes  (among  which  we  count  the  poems  of  the  late 
Mr.  John  Davidson),  the  conclusion  may  be  stated  in 
the  shape  of  George  Meredith's  note  of  interrogation : 

Will  there  be  rise  of  fountains  long  repressed, 
To  swell  with  aflBuents  the  forward  stream  ? 

Will  men  perceive  the  virtues  in  unrest, 

Till  life  stands  prouder  near  the  poets'  dream  ? 


CONCLUSION  407 

Our  hopes,  in  battling  acts  embodied,  dare 
Proclaim  that  we  have  paved  a  way  for  feet 

Now  stumbling ;  air  less  cavernous,  and  air 

That  feeds  the  soul,  we  breathe ;  for  more  entreat. 

What  figures  will  be  shown  the  century  hence  ? 

What  lands  intact  ?     We  do  but  know  that  Power 
From  Piety  divorced,  though  seen  immense. 

Shall  sink  on  envy  of  a  wayside  flower  \ 

Tantum  ferro  quantum  fietate  potentes  stamus,  sang  the 
poet  of  Imperial  Kome  ;  and  to  us,  entering  on  our 
inheritance  of  the  new  liberties  of  the  soul,  the  same 
warning  is  addressed,  lest  we  drag  old  liberties  in 
chains. 

Fiction,  the  second  great  vehicle  of  artistic  expression, 
is  less  perilous  to  the  prophet.  Le  roi  s'amuse,  and, 
though  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  always  laughs  at  our  amuse- 
ment, filling  admirably  the  privileged  part  of  King's 
Jester  to  King  Demos,  and  though  Mr.  Gilbert  Chesterton 
tries  to  make  us  break  into  philosophy  ^,  in  the  spirit 
of  Moliere's  satire  on  Monsieur  Jourdain's  prose,  we 
persist  in  demanding  entertainment  of  the  immemorial 
kind  in  which  children  most  delight.  We  must  have 
stories  about  ourselves,  just  a  little  idealized  and 
heightened,  so  that  the  moral  is  not  too  plain,  and  at 
times  just  a  little  above  our  heads.  '  Air  that  feeds 
the  soul  we  breathe ',  and,  in  these  days  of  the  science 

^  II  y  a  Cent  Ana  :  from  The  Flag,  published  by  The  Daily  Mail, 
May,  1908. 

*  He  culls  blossoms  of  philosophy  from  common  things.  The  same 
fanciful  inversiveness  and  a  like  whimsicality  of  wit  and  plausi- 
bility of  observation  distinguish  the  Breakfast-table  books  of  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  especially,  perhaps,  the  Professor  volume. 


4o8     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE 

of  psychology  and  of  emancipated  emotions,  we  continue 
to  explore  the  real  with  the  aim  of  attaining  the  ideal. 
The  heirs  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  using  their 
inheritance  in  different  ways,  are  employed  in  manipu- 
lating the  material.  At  the  bottom  are  the  mere  sensa- 
tionalists, of  whom  no  more  need  be  said.  At  the  top 
are  writers  like  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  a  Slav  by  descent, 
who,  like  Rossetti,  owes  much  to  the  un-English  strain 
in  his  blood.  Further  and  further  he  adventures  on 
the  infinite  ocean  of  feeling  from  the  secure  moorings 
of  proven  fact,  yet  returns  to  them  again  with  the 
spoils  of  the  sea  made  probable.  This  pursuit  of  fancy, 
though  it  resemble  at  times  a  mere  will  o'  the  wisp  chase, 
and  though  it  lead  literature  on  strange  odysseys, 
among  which  we  may  mention  the  writings  of  Lafcadio 
Hearn,  is  yet  a  source  of  strength  and  opens  the  door 
to  higher  knowledge  ;  and  a  growing  taste  for  such 
adventures  marks  a  Une  of  literature's  advance. 

To  dip  deeper  into  the  present  would  be  too  hazardous 
a  quest,  and  it  is  more  appropriate  to  look  back.  The 
century  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  of  Keats  and 
Shelley,  of  Byron  and  Carlyle,  of  Browning  and  George 
Meredith,  of  Tennyson  and  Matthew  Arnold,  of  Rossetti 
and  Swinburne,  of  Ruskin  and  WilUam  Morris,  of 
Dickens  and  Thackeray,  of  George  Ehot  and  Thomas 
Hardy,  of  Patmore  and  Pater,  is  the  forest  of  enchant- 
ment which  we  have  traversed.  Of  all  its  beauty  we 
are  not  yet  sensible,  of  all  its  truth  we  are  not  yet 
conscious,  of  all  its  wisdom  we  are  not  yet  freemen. 


CONCLUSION  409 

And  thus,  uninformed  still  with  the  whole  of  its  spiritual 
power,  we  may  seek  our  conclusion  from  the  Conclusion 
to  the  poem  which  was  an  invocation  to  the  age  : 

This  spiritual  Love  acts  not  nor  can  exist 
Without  Imagination,  which,  in  truth, 
Is  but  another  name  for  absolute  power 
And  clearest  insight,  ampUtude  of  mind, 
And  Reason  in  her  most  exalted  mood. 
This  faculty  hath  been  the  feeding  source 
Of  our  long  labour :  we  have  traced  the  stream 
Prom  the  blind  cavern  whence  is  faintly  heard 
Its  natal  murmur ;  followed  it  to  light 
And  open  day ;  accompanied  its  course 
Along  the  ways  of  Nature,  for  a  time 
Lost  sight  of  it  bewildered  and  engulphed ; 
Then  given  it  greeting  as  it  rose  once  more 
In  strength,  reflecting  from  its  placid  breast 
The  works  of  man  and  face  of  human  life ; 
And  lastly,  from  its  progress  have  we  drawn 
Faith  in  life  endless,  the  sustaining  thought 
Of  human  Being,  Eternity,  and  God. 

WoBDSWORTH,  The  Prelude,  xiv. 


INDEX 


Abbotsford,  109. 

Acton,  Lord,  399. 

Adam  Bede,  quoted,  264. 

Adonais,  131. 

Adventure,  novels  of,  275. 

Ages  in  literary  history,  2,  6. 

Aids  to  Reflection,  97. 

Ainger,  Canon,  363. 

Ainsworth,     William     Harrison, 

114,275. 
All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men, 

244,  254,  391. 
Allen,  George,  341. 
Alpine  worship,  33. 
Angel  in  the  House,  The,  371. 
Anstey,  F.,  244,  278. 
Aphorisms,  of  R.  L.  Stevenson, 

384. 
Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  210,  212. 
Argosy,  395. 
Arnold,     Matthew,     352 ;      his 

poetry,    353    ff.  ;     his    prose 

works,  359  flf. 
Arnold,  Thomas,  102. 
Atheism,  131. 
AthencRum,  393. 
Auguries  of  Innocence,   quoted, 

38. 
Austen,  Jane,  49  ff. 
Aytoun,  W.  E.,  194. 

Bage,  Robert,  55. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  363,  393,  400. 

Bailey,  P.  J.,  336. 

Baillie,  Joanna,  145. 

Ballantyne,  R.  M.,  275. 

Banality,  181. 


Barchester  Novels,  256. 
Barham,  R.  H.,  193. 
Barnes,  William,  193. 
Beaupuy,  Michel,  60. 
Beddoes,  Thomas  Lovell,  186  ff. 
Bennett,  Mr.  Arnold,  245,  346^. 
Benson,  Mr.  A.  C,  339. 
Bentham,  Jeremy,  221,  393. 
Bentley,  Richard,  394  ;    George, 

394. 
Besant,    Sir   Walter,    244,    254, 

394. 
Biographia  Literaria,  97. 
Black,  Adam,  394. 
Blackie,  John  Stuart,  335. 
Blackmore,  Richard,  263. 
Blackwood,  William,  394. 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  94. 
Bleak  House,  quoted,  251. 
Blessington,  Lady,  55. 
Bloomfield,  Robert,  26. 
Bohemians  in  London,  301. 
Boileau,  139. 
Books  and  poetry,  137. 
Borrow,  George,  193. 
Borthwick,  Peter,  395. 
Bowles,  William  Lisle,  145. 
Brimley,  George,  363. 
British  Association,  200^. 
BrontS,  Anne,  255. 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  254  ff. 
Bronte,  Emily,  255. 
Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  quoted,  323. 
Brougham,  Lord,  96. 
Brown,  Dr.  John,  363. 
Browning,  E.  B.,  286  f. 
Browning,  Robert,  63,  280 ;   his 


4" 


412 


INDEX 


Epilogue  to  Asolando,  282  ;  his 
message,  283 ;  his  views  of 
sin  and  virtue,  284  f. ;  of  love, 
286 ;  his  interpretation  of 
experience,  288  ;  his  revalua- 
tion, 289  f. 

Buchanan,  Robert,  309. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  400. 

Bumbledom,  244. 

Bums,  Robert,  31  ;  symbolizes 
transition,  32. 

Byron,  Lord,  meets  Scott,  120  ; 
his  fascination,  122 ;  his 
exoticism,  123 ;  biography, 
124;  meets  Shelley,  125; 
love  of  the  sea,  126  ;  of  liberty, 
130  ;  criticizes  Keats,  139  ; 
compared  with  Carlyle,  175. 

Calverley,  C.  S.,  337. 

Calvert,  Raisley,  60. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  82. 

Capitalistic  ideal,  345. 

Carleton,  William,  55. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  154 ;  bio- 
graphy, 165 ;  autobiography, 
168  ;  his  writings,  169  S.  ;  his 
style,  173  ;  and  Byron,  175  ; 
in  relation  to  his  contem- 
poraries, 177. 

Carroll,  Lewis,  337. 

Cary,  Henry,  146. 

Caesell,  John,  394. 

Cavalier  poets,  178. 

Celtic  Renaissance,  389. 

Chambers,  Robert,  154,  202; 
William,  154. 

Chapman,  Frederic,  392. 

Chesterton,  Mr.  G.  K.,  278,  407. 

Childe  Harold,  121  f. 

Church,  R.  W.,  216. 

City  of  Dreadful  Night,  The,  333. 

aare,  John,  26. 

Clough,  A.  H.,  332. 

Cobbett,  William,  101. 

Cockney  School,  145. 

Colenso,  Bishop,  215. 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  145. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  quoted,  41  ; 
his  poetical  aim,  67 ;  bio- 
graphy,    59 ;      gratitude     to 


Wordsworth,  61 ;  his  language, 
76  ;  prose  works,  97. 

Collectivism,  158. 

Collins,  Wilkie,  274. 

Comto,  Auguste,  221. 

Conduct-values,  260. 

Confesaions  of  a  Sensitive  Mind, 
181. 

Confessions  of  an  English 
Opium-Eater,  93. 

Conrad,  Mr.  Joseph,  248,  408. 

CornhiU  Magazine,  392. 

Cosmic  comedy.  111. 

Cottle,  Joseph,  60. 

Country,  as  rendered  by  Gray, 
18 ;  bv  Goldsmith,  21  ;  by 
Crabbeii  23  ;    by  Burns,  34. 

Cowden- Clarke,  Charles,  .136. 

Cowper,  William,  symbolizes 
transition,  32 ;  anticipates 
revolutionary  note,  39. 

Crabbe,  George,  20  ;  his  country 
musings  compared  with  Gold- 
smith's, 22 ;  The  Village, 
quoted,  23 ;  his  troop  of 
witnesses,  24  ;  his  inelasticity, 
25  ;   his  followers,  26. 

Cranford,  247^,  254. 

Crashaw,  Richard,  374. 

Crawford,  F.  Marion,  278. 

'  Criticism  of  life',  83. 

Croker,  John  William,  101. 

Croker,  Thomas,  55. 

Cross,  John,  271. 

Crystal  Palace,  277,  317,  346. 

Curie,  Mr.  R.  H.  P.,  292'. 

Daily  News,  392. 

Daily  Telegraph,  392. 

Darley,  George,  183  S. 

Darwin,  Charles,  202  ;  as  typical 

philosopher,  208  ;    seeks  facts 

first  and  foremost,  210 ;    his 

influence,  222. 
Darwinian  hypothesis,  influence 

of,  11,211. 
Dasent,  Sir  George,  392. 
Davidson,  John,  406. 
Davy,  Sir  H.,  203. 
Day,  Thomas,  32. 
'  Dead  language  ',  374. 


INDEX 


413 


Death's  J  est- Book,  187. 

Deaths  of  poots,  117  ff. 

Decentralization  of  literature, 
30. 

Defence  of  Guenevere,  The,  221. 

Defence  of  Poetry,  83. 

Delane,  J.  T.,  392. 

Democratic  idealism  in  Words- 
worth, 65. 

Democratic  verse,  24. 

De  Morgan,  Mr.  William,  261. 

Do  Quincey,  Thomas,  91  flf. 

de  Tabley,  Lord,  336. 

de  Vere,  Sir  Aubrey,  145. 

Dickens,  Charles,  246  ff.  ;  his 
appeal  to  posterity,  250 ;  his  ex- 
uberance, 252  ;  his  characters, 
253. 

Dickinson,  G.  Lowes,  383^. 

Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
392. 

Diffuseness  of  early  nineteenth- 
century  poets,  40. 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  164. 

D'Israeli,  Isaac,  101. 

Doctrine  of  Sacrifice,  The,  218. 

Dogmatic  theology,  206. 

Domestic  fiction,  256. 

Don  Juan,  125. 

Doyle.  Sir  A.  C,  274. 

Doyle,  Richard,  393. 

Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  244, 
385. 

Dream-children,  90. 

Dream-Pedlary,  186^ 

du  Maurier,  George,  393. 

Earth-poetry,  298. 
Earthly  Paradise,  The,  324. 
East  Lynne,  256. 
Edgeworth,  Maria,  53  ff. 
Edinburgh  Review,  The,  96. 
Educational  pioneers,  209. 
Egoistic  literature,  99. 
Eighteenth  century,  revolt  from, 

138. 
Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard, 

17. 
Elia,  Essays  of,  89. 
Eliot,  George,  see  Evans. 
Elizabethanism,  95. 


Elliott,  Ebenezer,  26. 
Emancipation,  the  age  of,  11. 
Emerson,   R.   W.,   quoted,   204, 

364. 
English      Humourists      of      the 

Eighteenth  Century,  257. 
Esmond,  258. 

Essays  and  Reviews,  214.  '^ 
Essays  in  Criticism,  360. 
Essay  on  Man,  TAc  (1733 :  1832), 

195  ;  and  In  Memoriam,  232  f. 
Eugene  Aram,  162. 
Evans,     Mary     Ann     ('George 

Eliot '),  262  ;  biography,  271  ; 

works,  272. 
Excursion,  The,  quoted,  37,  82. 
Expansion  of  England,  The,  399. 

Fall  of  Hyperion,  The,  141. 
Faraday,  Michael,  203. 
Farrar,  F.  W.,  216,  243. 
Faust,  84. 
Ferrier,  Susan,  55. 
Feuilletonists,  94. 
Fichte,  166. 
Fiction,  future,  407 ;  Victorian, 

234  ff. 
Finlay,  George,  102. 
Fitzgerald,  Edward,  335. 
Fleshly  School  of  Poetry,  The,  309. 
Fors  Clavigera,  342. 
Forster,  John,  363. 
Fortnightly  Review,  393. 
Frankenstein,  49. 
Freeman,  E.  A.,  398. 
French     Revolution,     influence 

of,  11,211. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,  364. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  393  ;  as  historian, 

398. 
Froude,  R.  H.,  212. 
Function  of  literature,  5,  201. 

Gallienne,  Mr.  le,  278. 
Galsworthy,  Mr.  John,  245. 
Gamett,  Dr.  Richard,  353. 
Gaskell,  Elizabeth,  253. 
Georgian  society,  120. 
Giaour,  The,  122. 
Gifford,  William,  96. 
Gilbert,  Sir  W.  S.,  318. 


414 


INDEX 


Gissing,  George,  264. 

Goblin  Market,  320. 

God   or   man,   proper  study   of 

mankind,  197,  266. 
Godwin,  William,  49. 
Goethe,  84. 
Goodiness,  364. 
Gosse,  Philip  Henry,  206. 
Gray,  Thomas,  17. 
Great  Exhibition,  277,  317. 
Green,  J.  R.,  399. 
Green,  T.  H.,  401. 
Grote,  George,  102. 
Oicardian,  393. 

Hake,  T.  G.,  194,  335. 
Hallam,  Henry,  101. 
Halsham,  John,  388. 
Hamilton,  Sir  William,  222. 
Hardy,  Thomas,  262,  273  f. 
Hargreaves,  James,  significance 

of,  19,  203. 
Harrison,    Frederic,    222^  ;     on 

Ruskin,  quoted,  342. 
Hawker,  R.  S.,  193. 
Hazlitt,  William,  98. 
Heartiness,  252. 
Heber,  Reginald,  146. 
Hellas,  131. 
Helps,  Sir  Arthur,  363. 
Hemans,  Felicia,  145. 
Henley,  W.  E.,  388. 
Hentv,  G.  A.,  275. 
Herrick,  Robert,  178. 
Historians,  397  ff. 
Historical  romance,   decline   of, 

114. 
Historical  writing,  103  f. 
Hogg,  James,  94. 
Holcroft,  Thomas,  55. 
Holmes,  0.  W.,  407». 
Hood,  Thomas,  191. 
Home,  R.  H.,  193. 
Houghton,  Lord,  335. 
Hound  of  Heaven,  The,  380. 
Hughes,  Thomas,  219. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  96,  145. 
Hutchinson,  Mr.  Thoma8,quoted, 

65. 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  393. 
Huxley,     T.     H.,     203;     joins 


School     Board    for     London, 

209  ;  his  work,  219. 
Hymn  to  Colour,  292,  373. 
Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,  131. 
Hyperion,  141. 

Idea  of  a  University,  The,  209. 
Idler,  The,  quoted,  42. 
Idylls  of  the  King,  229. 
Imaginary  Conversations,  100. 
Imaginative  realism,  310. 
Imaginative  reason,  280^. 
Immortality,  Ode,  quoted,  78. 
In  Memoriam,  230  ff.,  268. 
Indirect  language,  79. 
Infant  Joy,  quoted,  37. 
Interpretation,  need  of,  7. 
Intuitional  constructiveness,  81. 
Irish  Melodies,  146. 

Jacobs,  Mr.  W.  W.,  253'. 

James,  G.  P.  R.,  114. 

Jane  Eyre,  254. 

Jefferies,  Richard,  386  ff. 

Jeffrey,  Francis,  96. 

Jenny,  306,  309. 

Jerrold,  Douglas,  194,  393. 

John  Halifax,  Gentleman,  345. 

John  Inglesant,  391. 

John  Milton,  Essay  on,  quoted, 
156. 

Johnson,  Dr.,  death  of,  13  ;  his 
survivors,  14  ;  their  relation- 
ship, 15  ;  their  successors,  16. 

Joubert,  Joseph,  quoted,  80. 

Journalism,  392. 

Jowett,  Benjamin,  214. 

Keats,   John,    136 ;     biography, 

136 ;     rebels    at    Pope,    138 ; 

his  critics,  140 ;  his  aim,  143 ; 

and  Pre-Raphaelitism,  305. 
Keble,  John,  211  f. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  210,  218,  254. 
Kingsley,  Mary,  218. 
Kingston,  W.  H.  G.,  275. 
Kipling,  Mr.  Rudyard,  243,  277. 
Knight,  Charles,  154. 
Knowledge    and      belief,     206 ; 

parties  to  tho  conflict,  207  f.  ; 

false  basis  of  opposition,  209. 


INDEX 


415 


Knowles,  James  Sheridan,  148. 
Knowles,  Sir  James,  393. 
Kubla  Khan,  74. 

Lady  of  Shalott,  The,  303. 

Laila  Rookh,  146. 

Lamb,  Charles,  86  ff. 

Lamb,  Mary,  90. 

Landon,  Letitia,  146. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  99  ff. 

Landscape,  right  use  of,  67. 

Language  of  the  sense,  the,  80. 

Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  159. 

Lear,  Edward,  337. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  400. 

Lectures  on  Heroes,  170. 

Lee,  Dr.  Sidney,  392. 

Leech,  John,  393. 

Legouis,  Prof.  E.,  quoted,  65. 

Lemon,  Mark,  393. 

Lever,  C.  J.,  275. 

Levy,  J.  M.,  395. 

Ijcwes,  George  Henry,  271. 

Lewis,  Sir  G.  C,  363. 

Lewis,  M.  G.,  48. 

Liberty,  periods  of,  269. 

Literature  an  organism,  5. 

Locker,  Frederic,  337. 

Lockhart,  J.  E.,  96. 

Locksley  Hall,  227. 

London,  aspects  of,  247. 

Longman,  Thomas,  394. 

Lorna  Doone,  112. 

Loss  and  Gain,  213,  244. 

Love  and  Duty,  227. 

Love  in  the  Valley,  295. 

Love-Lily,  311. 

Lover,  Samuel,  55,  275. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  152,  202. 

Lyrical  Ballads,  56 ;  its  im- 
portance, 61. 

Lytton,  Earl  of  ('  Owen  Mere- 
dith '),  160. 

Lytton,  Lord,  160  ff. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  156  ff.,  396  f. 
Macaulay,  Zachary,  159. 
Mackenzie,  Henry,  32. 
Macmillan,  Daniel,  394. 
Magazines,  old  and  new,  394  f. 
Maine,  Sir  H.  S.,  399. 


Malthus,  T.  R.,  202. 

Manning,  Cardinal,  214. 

Marius  the  Epicurean,  376  ff. 

Marryatt,  Frederic,  275. 

Marston,  P.  B.,  336. 

Martin  Ghuzzlewit,  quoted,  250. 

Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  194. 

Massey,  Gerald,  336. 

Masson,  Prof.,  quoted,  78. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  216  ff. 

Meditation  under  Stars,  296,  373. 

Meredith,  George,  262 ;  treat- 
ment of  women,  270 ;  char- 
acteristics of  his  novels,  272  ; 
prose  style,  273  ;  as  poet,  291  ; 
his  allegory  of  Colour  and 
Love,  292  f.  ;  his  message, 
295 ;  his  tenderness,  297  ; 
as  novelist  and  poet,  298 ; 
quoted,  406. 

Meynell,  Alice,  380. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  221. 

Minto,  William,  363. 

Mitford,  Miss,  193. 

Mitford,  William,  102. 

Modern  Painters,  348. 

Montgomery,  James,  145. 

Monthly  Packet,  395^ 

Moore,  Thomas,  82,  146. 

Moral  preoccupation  of  English 
poets,  317. 

Moral  simplification,  151. 

Morley,  John  (Viscount),  quoted, 
176  ;  his  work,  393,  401. 

Morris,  Sir  Lewis,  336. 

Morris,  William,  321  ff. 

Murrav,  John,  120,  394. 

Myers,'  F.  W.  H.,  295. 

Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  The,  44. 

Natural     philosophy,     tradition 

of,  203. 
Natural  worth,  269. 
Nature  and  Man,  262  ff. 
Necessity  of  Atheism,  The,  128. 
Nettleship,  R.  L.,  401. 
Newman,  John  Henry,  213  f. 
Night  and  Morning,  162. 
Nineteenth  Century  Review,  393. 
Nodes  Amhrosianxx,  94. 
Noel,  Roden,  336. 


4i6 


INDEX 


'  Noetics  ',  200. 

Novel,  function  of,  259  f. 

Noyes,  Mr.  Alfred,  402. 

Objective  mystery,  35. 

Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  339. 

Oliver  Twist,  quoted,  250. 

One  Word  More,  287. 

Opie,  Mrs.,  55. 

Optimism  and  art,  6. 

Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,  quoted, 

264. 
Oriel  College,  199. 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  334. 
'  Ouida  ',  389. 

Outer  and  Inner,  quoted,  366. 
Oxford  movement,  199. 
Ozymandias,  135. 

Palgrave,  F.  T.,  336. 

Pall  Mall  Gazette,  392. 

Paracelsus,  286. 

Pater,  Walter,  369  fif. 

Patmore,  Coventry,  371  fi. 

Pattison,  Mark,  2 15. 

Paul  Clifford,  160. 

Payn,  James,  278. 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  55. 

Percy,  Thomas,  105. 

Peter  Bell,  72. 

Philistia,  361. 

Phillips,  Mr.  Stephen,  389;  his 
poetry  examined,  403  ff. 

Phillpotts,  Mr.  Eden,  263. 

Philosophers,  short  list  of  Vic- 
torian, 222. 

Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  179^ 

Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical,  179  ff. 

Poetic  language,  imperfection 
of,  292. 

Poetry,  future,  406. 

Poet's  Epitaph,  A,  quoted,  77. 

Political  Justice,  65. 

Politics  for  the  People,  218. 

Pope,  Alexander,  quoted,  63 ; 
and  Keats,  138 ;  his  Essay 
on  Man  reconsidered  a 
hundred  years  afterwards, 
195  ;   and  Tennyson,  234. 

Positivism,  221'. 

Practical  value  of  art,  8. 


Praed,  W.  M.,  191. 

Prefaces,  359. 

Prelude,  The,  examined,  66 ; 
quoted,  78,  409. 

Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood, 
303  ;   origin,  305. 

Pre-Raphaelitism,  effect  of,  318. 

Princess,  The,  228,  238. 

Procter,  Adelaide  Anne,  336. 

Procter,  Bryan  ('  Barry  Corn- 
wall '),  145. 

Prose,  development  of,  93,  224, 
348,  375. 

Prothero,  Dr.  George,  399. 

'  Pulvis  et  Umbra ',  383. 

Punch,  393. 

Pusey,  Edward  Bouverie,  212  f. 

Puttenham,  George,  quoted,  149. 

Quarterly  Review,  The,  96  ;  on 
The  Descent  of  Man,  quoted, 
208. 

Queen  Mab,  128. 

Radcliffe.  Mrs.,  44  ff. 

Reade,  Charles,  274. 

'  Reading  of  Earth,  A  ',  295. 

Recapitulation,  first  period,  148  ; 
second  period,  194 ;  poetic 
renaissance,  298  ;  from  Cole- 
ridge to  Morris,  325 ;  Pre- 
Raphaelite  movement,  339, 
365. 

Reduce,  The,  quoted,  195. 

Reform  Act,  195. 

'  Renascence  of  Wonder  ',  3. 

'  Return  to  Nature  ',  33. 

Rhodes,  Cecil,  199. 

Richter,  J.  P.  F.,  166. 

Ridge,  Mr.  Pett,  254. 

Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner, 
The,  57,  71. 

Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  289. 

Robert  Elsmere,  244,  276. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  82. 

Romance  and  science,  161. 

Romantic  Revival,  inadequacy 
of  the  term,  3. 

Rose  Aylmer,  101. 

Rossetti,  Christina,  318  ff. 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  306  ff. 


INDEX 


417 


Rossetti,  W.  M.,  302. 
Rousseau,  his  influence  examined, 

32. 
Routledge,  George,  394. 
Ruhaiyat,  335. 
Ruskin,  John,  340  ;   last  period, 

342 ;      middle    period,     343  ; 

first   period,   347 ;    his   style, 

348  fi. 

Saintsbury,   Prof.,   quoted,  139, 

186^  362  ;   his  work,  363. 
Sandford  and  Merton,  32. 
Sartor  Besartus,  167  ff.,  344i. 
Saturday  Review,  393. 
Scenery  and  sentiment,  46. 
Science,  and  romance,  161  ;   and 

imagination,    204,    210 ;     and 

beauty,  390. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  105  ;    literary 

training,  106  ;  fecundity,  107  ; 

biography,     108 ;      character, 

109  ;  greatness.  111  ;  criticism 

of  style,  112  ;  his  supersession 

as  a  poet,  118  ;   meets  Byron, 

120. 
Seeley,    Sir   J.    R.,    quoted,    2 ; 

as  historian,  399. 
Seeley,  Richard  Benton,  394. 
S61incourt,  Mr.  E.  de,  142^. 
Sensationalism,  68. 
Sense  and  soul,  conflict  between, 

268,  385. 
Sensitive  PlaiU,  The,  132. 
Sentiency  of  plants,  32^. 
Shakespeare,  Lamb's  views  on, 

88. 
Shaw,  Mr.  Bernard,  278,  407. 
Shelley,    Mary     WoUstonecraft, 

quoted,  129. 
Shelley,    Percy    Bysshe,    meets 

Byron,  125  ;    biography,  127  ; 

love    of     liberty,     130 ;      his 

diction    and     rhjrthm,     132 ; 

nature-magic,     134 ;      music, 

135  ;  and  Darley,  185. 
Siddal,  Elizabeth,  307. 
Sidgwick,     Henry,    401  ;      Mrs. 

Henry,  401. 
Skylark,  The,  quoted,  37. 
Sleep  and  Poetry,  137. 

27 


Smedley,  F.  E.,  275. 

Smiles,  Samuel,  346. 

Smith,  George,  392. 

Smith,  Svdney,  96. 

Smith,  W.  H.,  209. 

Social  idealism,  342. 

Social  welfare,  163. 

Solitary  Reaper,  The,  quoted,  77. 

Sophism  of  the  spirit,  249. 

Southey,  Robert,  81. 

Specimens  of  English  Dramatic 

Writers,  87. 
Spectator,  393. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  220. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  338. 
Sporting  fiction,  274. 
Stalky  and  Co.,  243. 
Stanley,  A.  P.,  215. 
Statue  and  the  Bust,  The,  284, 

312. 
Stephen,  J.  K.,  337. 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  quoted,  291  ; 

as  editor,  392  ;  his  works,  400. 
Stepping  Westward,  quoted,  77. 
Stevenson,  R.  A.  M.,  301. 
Stevenson,    Robert   Louis,    276, 

381  ff. 
Story  of  my  Heart,  The,  386  f . 
Strand  Magazine,  395. 
Stubbs,  Bishop,  399. 
Subjective  mysticism,  36. 
Sullivan,  Sir  Arthur,  318. 
Supernaturalism,  71. 
Surtees,  Robert,  275. 
Swinburne,  A.  C,  96,  327  ff. 
Sylvia,  184. 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  380. 
Sympathy  with  the  poor,  253. 

Taylor,  Tom,  274. 

Temple  Bar,  394. 

Tenniel,  Sir  John,  393. 

Tennyson,  Alfred  (Lord),  first 
period,  179  ff.  ;  and  Beddoes, 
189  ;  silence  in  bereavement, 
224;  Poems  of  1842,  225; 
moral  rectitude,  227  ;  his 
maturity,  228  ;  conservatism, 
229 ;  his  philosophy,  232 ;  com- 
pared with  Pope,  234 ;  his 
creed,  235  ;   his  style,  236  ff.  ; 


4i8 


INDEX 


common  sense,  242  ;  his  fare- 
well poem,  281  ;  and  Meredith, 
294 ;  and  the  Pre-Raphaelites, 
303,  366. 

Tes8  of  the  i)'  TJrhervilles,  quoted, 
207,  264,  267. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  257  ff. 

Theologians  as  poets,  335. 

Theology  v.  geology,  204. 

Thompson,  Francis,  380. 

Thomson,  James,  333. 

Timidity,  182. 

Tit-Bits,  395. 

Tithonus,  225. 

Toys,  The,  378. 

Tracts  for  the  Times,  212  i. 

Traill,  H.  D.,  337. 

Transcendental  language,  76, 374. 

Transcendental  synthesis,  143. 

Transition  (1825-1840),  tabu- 
lated, 155. 

Treasure  Island,  384. 

Trench,  Mr.  Herbert,  402. 

Trench,  R.  C,  216. 

Trevelyan,  Mr.  G.  M.,  292^. 

TroUope,  Anthony,  256  f. 

Tupper,  Martin,  336. 

Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  154,  348. 

Two  Voices,  The,  190. 

Tyndall,  John,  203. 

Ulysses,  225. 
Vnknovm  Eros,  The,  372. 
Vnio  this  Last,  346. 
.  Utility  and  beauty,  317. 

'  Vain  Virtues ',  312. 
Vanity  Fair,  259. 
Vestiges  of  Creation,  202. 
Victoria,  Queen,  and  Tennyson, 

228  ;     diamond  jubilee,   277  ; 

golden  jubilee,  281. 


Victorian  literature,  201. 
Village,  The,  23. 

Wallace,  Dr.  A.  R.,  203. 

Walter  family,  396. 

Ward,  Dr.,  214. 

Ward,     Mrs.     Humphry,     244, 

276. 
Watson,    Mr.    William,    quoted, 

40,  277. 
Waverley  Novels,  107  fE. 
Wedgwood,  Thomas,  97. 
WeUs,  C.  J.,  336. 
WeUs,  Mr.  H.  G.,  245,  278,  341, 

390. 
'  Wessex  ',  112. 
Westward  Ho .',  218. 
Whiggism,  159. 
White,  Henry  Kirke,  145. 
White,  Mr.  Percy,  244. 
Whyte-Melville,  G.  J.,  275. 
Wilberforce,  Bishop,  200. 
Wilde,  Oscar,  389. 
Wilson,      John      ('  Christopher 

North  '),  94. 
Women  in  fiction,  270. 
Women-novelists,   short  list  of, 

2761. 
Wood,  Mrs.  Henry,  256. 
Wordsworth,        William,       and 

Coleridge,  57  ;  biography,  59  ; 

his  literary  criticism,  62  ;    his 

interpretative     method,     77 ; 

and  Pope,  195  ;  and  Meredith, 

297. 
Working    Men's    College,     216, 

340. 
World  and  mind,  86,  296,  365. 


Yeats,    W.    B.,   on   Blake, 

his  work,  389. 
Yonge,  Charlotte,  363  f . 


38; 


Printed  by  Morrison  &  QtSB  Limitxd,  Edinburgh 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


May3l6  3 

JUN5    1968 

«ug3063 

5O10tt 

I 


m^^ 


'  V'>*i: 


Rf. 


^  V 


MAY  1  -  IS 


T^. 


Book  Slip-35m-7,'63(D863484)4280 


L  005  442  427  0 


PR 
M27e 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  206199    0 


